


Bowled Over

by Jillypups



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Bronnaery, Detroit, F/M, Food Trucks, I'll add more characters as this develops, MOAR IDIOT FLUFF, Modern AU, Romance, Sansa Stark - Freeform, Stannis Baratheon - Freeform, alternative universe, and dumb, and probably horrible, but i can't help myself, but it's time to board another ship, give to me your leather, have i lost you yet?, idk what i am doing, little bit of pining, little bit of punning, my bbs, my boos, not canon, sansa and arya, sansa learns to foxtrot, sansa the almost vegetarian chef, snarky besties, stannis the super healthy CEO of an online newspaper, stannis throws a party, stansa, super loosey goosey, take from me my lace, this is definitely ridiculous, yacht rock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-05
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-06-05 22:10:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 65,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15180440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jillypups/pseuds/Jillypups
Summary: Stannis is a frequent customer of Sansa's food truck, Bowl'd Over. But is it the organic free range no GMO farm to table vegetarian cuisine that keeps him coming back, or is it something else?Picset





	1. Chapter 1

Sansa’s got her food truck parked and idling in the shade, but despite that and the fact that almost all the menu items at Bowl’d Over are raw or served chilled, she’s still sweating her butt off waiting for the lunch crowds to come spilling out of the business center across the street.  It doesn’t matter how many crisp, bright smells are wafting from her condiment station and her refrigerator, doesn’t matter how farm-to-table fresh everything is and how invocative it all is in conjuring up some cool, clean-aired meadow.

As Arya would (and likely will) say, it is hot as balls back here.

I mean, it’s not _that_ bad, Sansa thinks to herself as she exhales a mighty gust of breath up her face to blow her bangs off her damp forehead. Working up here in Detroit is a lot more comfortable than when she went to culinary school down in Scottsdale. There’s sea breezes and boats on the water not too far away. There’s hustle and bustle and exciting movement to a long-suffering city clambering back to its feet. There’s um. And, well. Okay, she thinks with a slight slouch to her shoulders as she readjusts one of several mini-fans to aim closer to her face. This damned _humidity_ makes it a lot more, well, _ball-_ like.

Yacht Rock plays merrily out of the small speakers she’s got hooked up on either side of the Order Here and Pickup Here windows, which have been open for over an hour to try and coax in some airflow, and those open sliding-glass windows are what alert Sansa, mid-last-minute-parsley-chop, that her sister has indeed arrived on her motorized bicycle. And just like that, the smell of lime and cilantro vinaigrette dissipates under the heavy stink of motor oil.

Sansa slaps her chef’s knife on the long plastic strip of cutting board on the condiment station and spins around on her heel, smacks her forehead on a bag of recycled paper food containers that has half-slipped off the overhead rack. Now she’s _real_ scowly.

“Would you at _least_ get an electric bike, for god’s sake?” Sansa says, half hanging out of the Order Here window, making an exaggerated wave of her hand in front of her face.

“If I had like $800 then sure, sis, I’d love to,” Arya says in a half-shout as she dismounts and walks the bike to a rack nearby. “This piece of shit was a fraction of that. Guess you’ll have to give me a raise so I can help you save the planet a little quicker.”

“You’re lucky I’ve turned enough of a profit to pay you at all,” Sansa quips, because it’s still a massive point of pride that she can afford an employee whom she is paying under minimum wage as well as under the table.

Arya is busy chaining the offensive thing up, but she takes enough time to turn around with a cheerful flick of the bird over her shoulder. Sansa has half a mind to suggest as a follow up that she could at least park the stinky thing a few blocks away, but the entire reason Arya’s riding one of those things is because her car recently got stolen. The last thing she’s going to want is to let that thing out of her sight.

“Oh, real nice, real mature, sous chef,” Sansa says to Arya’s retreating back as her little sister rounds the truck to open the door at the back.

Sansa is still hanging out the window to enjoy a sudden midsummer breeze that for the first time in weeks feels more cool than hot.

“God, it’s hot as _balls_ back here,” Arya says, but it falls on deaf ears because Sansa is so transported.

“Mmm,” she says with a closed-eyed sigh; those boats on the water and “Come and Get Your Love” by Redbone on the speakers; Arya moving around in the truck that makes it rock like a little canoe; that singular breeze drifting sweat-damp hair against the nape of her neck like kisses.

It’s a nice little moment before the lunch rush and after those two hours of food prep, so even though she’s hanging out of the window like an absolute rube, and even though the narrow little counter is digging into her ribs and shoving the poked-out edge of her underwire into her boob, Sansa keeps her lean and her smile and her closed eyes. Until-

“Ms. Stark? Are you unwell?”

Sansa freezes, all sway and summer fun gone. Hell, even the dang song changed to one she doesn’t recognize, and it all serves to make her slowly swallow a big gulp of embarrassment as she slowly stands out of her lean to hunch over, elbows to the counter, as she opens her eyes to look down at the man who just spoke her name.

Crisp grey suit, hair cropped close to his head with the sort of balding that doesn’t deter from the kind of calm power he exudes. Born into authority, perhaps. A walking downtown building, all metal and glass, form following function, though he’s fit as well as fine-tuned.

“Who, me? Oh, yeah, yeah, I’m just- you know, enjoying the weather before getting to work.”

He’s not one to startle, this man, so he doesn’t blink or look taken aback, standing in 90 degree weather with the humidity high enough to turn Bowl’d Over into a sauna on wheels. But the corner of his mouth does twitch. An eyebrow does a sudden jump.  

He’s not just some stranger, either, which only adds to her embarrassment like logs to a fire; no, he’s one of her regulars, one of her constants, and if she’s perfectly honest with herself, one of her favorites, for reasons entirely unknown to her. The straight of his back that matches the straight of his ties. Impeccably dressed, always, to match that impeccable posture, even though this heat wave is enough to ruin anyone’s attempt at either. His deep appreciation for all the puns she (and okay, fine, yes, Arya sometimes) creates for her menu items.

“Enjoying the weather?” says Mr. Baratheon – first name Stannis, she noted the first time he paid with his debit card – both eyebrows lifted now as he looks around for some beautiful, balmy, spring day. He lifts his hands, coming up empty. “ _This_ weather?”

Sansa settles back into her lean with a laugh. “Okay, fine, one solitary cool breeze in the middle of this muck.”

Mr. Baratheon nods, just and silent approval of her reassessment.

“Though as always, you seem unruffled by it,” she cannot help but say, and she smiles, rests her weight on one folded arm as she reaches back to pat the back of her upswept hair, presses her fingers to the sloppy-on-purpose bun that’s perched on top of her head, taking inventory of how she must look compared to him. A sweaty hot mess in an old tank top and jean shorts, no makeup save for foundation with sunscreen and a little bit of mascara.

“I can assure you I am absolutely miserable. If only I could get away with wearing something a little less, ah, formal,” he says with a nod towards her, all hands in his pockets and unflappable eye contact, and they regard each other a long moment before he flicks that gaze to the menu on the side of the truck.

“There’s a couple of new specials today,” Sansa says, leaning further out to look alongside him at the chalk and blackboard menu.

He permits himself a rare chuckle; she’s only heard it a couple of times but they’ve always been at some of her funnier puns. Another reason she likes him. Sort of like the way a person can be proud of walking by an old guard dog who simply wags his tail instead of growls.

“’Quinoa Talk About It,’” he says with another nod of approval. “Ah, and ‘Turn the Beet Around.’ A little on the obvious side, but still satisfying.”

“Everything here is satisfying,” Sansa says with a smile.

“Everything but the wages,” Arya mutters behind her, mid-grunt as she wrests open a jar of homemade pickled radishes. “Is there a food truck union somewhere around here?”

“Um, _anyways,_ ” Sansa says hastily with a quick glare over her shoulder. She turns back to her first customer of the day. “What’ll it be, Mr. Baratheon?”

A small strange thrill when she realizes he was staring at her breasts when she wasn’t looking, here where she’s got them squeezed together above her folded forearms. Doesn’t matter now that the counter is still wedged into her ribs, that her underwire is still poking her. Thank you, underwire, she thinks with a tingly sort of flush as she tries to think about organic food instead of a man, old enough to be her father, looking at her décolletage.

“Quinoa Talk About It,” he says after a few moments’ thought.

“Can we talk about what?” Sansa says cheekily as she stands up and out of the window to write the order down on a ticket. Oh god, she thinks. Oh god, am I flirting with him? With _him_ of all impossible people.

“No, I meant, that’s what I want to order.” Hands out of the pocket as he withdraws his wallet with a frown. “The new special.”

Oh god, I’m flirting and he’s not, oh god, okay, cool, lets just die of embarrassment, Sansa thinks as she turns around to hand the ticket to her sister. Doesn’t help either that there’s a handful of people milling around and queuing up behind him. It’s enough having Arya within earshot. Now there are witnesses to Sansa tripping and falling on her own sword.

 “I’m already on it,” Arya says, though she takes the ticket and sticks it in the order wheel anyways. “Hilarious joke, by the way.”

Sansa turns back to take his method of payment – a crisp twenty today – and tries not to make an ass out herself. Again.

“No, no, I know- I mean, I knew that, I was just, you know, trying to be funny. You know, with the um, the pun. The food name, I mean. You know.”

 “Ah,” he says with a nod. “Now I follow.”

It’s a quinoa bowl with black beans and sweet potato, a cilantro cream drizzle and fresh lime, and Arya has it assembled and packaged by the time Sansa has the man’s change.

“That’s twelve out of twenty,” Sansa murmurs, ringing him up and pulling out a worn five-dollar bill, two ones, and four quarters, and she says _fuck_ in her head because she forgot to hit up the ATM on her way downtown. “Sorry, I need to go break some of my bigger bills. People almost always pay by card these days.”

She drops the coins in his open palm and then lays the bills on top, notices clean manicured nails when his fingers close over the cash. Kempt. That’s the word for this guy.

“Then that’s what I’ll do next time, Ms. Stark,” he says, stepping to the next window to take his food from Arya, who instantly starts pointing at people and demanding their orders from them. “I’d hate to be an inconvenience.”

He’s a long, drawn out steady gaze, unwavering to the point that it should be unnerving, but for some bizarre reason, it serves more like that cool sea breeze she felt when he first stepped up to her beloved little truck. And the way the wind took away her thoughts momentarily, so does his gaze take away every last scrap of sanity and play-hard-to-get sensibility. He turns to walk away from her, one hand putting his change in his pocket, the other holding his food. Hastily Sansa opens her mouth.

“You could start by calling me Sansa,” she calls out, ignoring some of the more amused looks on her customers’ faces. “I’ll be with you in one moment,” she murmurs with a glance to the next woman in line, though when Mr. Baratheon stops midstride it recaptures her attention.

He turns to slowly face her, the smallest of frowns creasing his forehead above the bridge of his nose. Amused bemusement, if there ever were such a thing to be. But then he nods.

“All right, Sansa. But I’m afraid you’ll have to call me Stannis then. It’s only fair, don’t you think?”

“Absolutely,” Sansa says, ignoring Arya’s elbow in her back as she scoots past her. “Fair’s fair.”

The smile he gives her isn't much but it's genuine, the small uptick in the corner of his mouth, the way is warms his eyes just ever so, and it's one she returns with ease.

"Bitch, peas," Arya whispers from where she stands behind her. "That guy is soy old."

"I don't wanna taco bout it," Sansa sniffs imperiously before leaning out of the window again, smiling because the crowd is close to twenty people, smiling because fair's fair. "All right, folks. Who's next?"

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm on a Stansa high and I couldn't help but bang this out today.
> 
>  
> 
> [Picset](http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/175619195183/bowled-over-chapter-2-by-jillypups-youve-got)

“You’ve got to be fucking _kidding_ me right now,” Margaery says as she steps back from the produce display, hands on her hips, and the vintage polka dotted sundress she’s in makes her look like a very angry Donna Reed. “You call that decent arugula?”

Sansa raises her eyebrows and uses another swallow of her water ice to suppress a snort of laughter.

They’re standing in Shed 2 of Detroit’s Eastern Market, the rain outside having driven everyone without a canopy outside to scurry for shelter. They are surrounded by countless vendors, farmers, gardeners and livestock, rows of fresh produce and flowers, baskets of free range eggs and mountains of local cheeses. The fact that it’s one of the biggest year-round farmer’s markets, the fact that the seller currently getting bitched out has been doing this for longer than Sansa’s been studying culinary arts, those things do nothing to stop Margaery from snatching a bunch of the offending greens and shaking it like maraca in the overall-clad man’s face. “I wouldn’t serve this to the chicken who lays the egg I use to make my cheating ex-boyfriend’s laxative-laced _omelet,_ let alone use it in a salad at my café.”

“Hey now, sweetheart, I am _sick_ of you giving me grief for the smallest goddamn issue,” Bronn says as he lunges forward to snatch the bunch of arugula from her. Leaves – that are, Sansa must admit, a little on the wilted side – fall to the ground like sad, peppery green confetti.

“Hey, give me some of that,” Arya whispers from slightly behind Sansa’s left shoulder as she reaches for Sansa’s cup.

“You have your own water ice!” Sansa hisses, twisting away from her sister to keep the delicious lemony slushy safe.

“You’re lucky I give you grief considering how much business I’ve given you over the years.”

Margaery is all arms folded across the chest, foot tapping indignation with a healthy dose of snob. Just like Sansa likes her. Everyone could benefit from slipping into the Margaery outfit from time to time.

“Butternut tick her off, buddy, she’s formidable,” Sansa says before trying to suck down as much water ice as she can through her bamboo straw.

“Yeah? Well I’m starting to think it’s not even _worth_ it anymore. I have plenty of other customers who aren’t complete raging assholes every week.”

“I ate all mine,” Arya whines, whipping out a plastic spoon as she reaches out to try and dig around in Sansa’s treat.

“Where’s your kettle corn then?”

“I ate that too. What?” she says with a shrug when Sansa sighs, and she finally succeeds in scooping out a huge dollop of slush. “Podrick and I went out last night and I’m super hungover. I need fuel.”

Sansa rolls her eyes and gives Arya a gentle pat on the shoulder. Her sister _did_ look pretty green around the gills when Sansa picked her up at dawn.

“Oh, is that right? Well, let me tell you one thing, buster,” Margaery says, stepping over a row of five-gallon buckets of wheatgrass, and she punctuates her next line with jabs of her fingers to the vendor’s chest. “The lady giveth and the lady taketh away.”

“Lady? Where’s a lady?” Bronn says, swatting her hand away from him. “Show me a lady and I’ll show you product that she’d be delighted to buy.”

“Oh _please,_ ” Margaery snaps, her temper momentarily outdone by a distant sear of lightning and a long low rumble of thunder.

“Whoa, a ‘please’? What was that, was that _manners_? What’s next, a thank you for the excellent arugula that you know you’re going to buy?”

“Wow, he’s arugula asshole, huh,” Arya mutters into the cup of slush, having finally commandeered Sansa’s water ice.

To nobody’s surprise, Margaery bursts out laughing and leans in to kiss her boyfriend on the mouth.

“Yeah, but he’s my ‘rugula asshole. Do me a favor and give me your best stuff, baby, and I’ll pay you half for the trouble of having to deal with you.”

“60%,” he says immediately, turning around to rifle through the bunches of greens.

“55%,” Margaery counters, back to fishwife with her hands on her hips.

“Come on, let’s go. They’ll be at this all day, and I want to go pet the baby chicks.”

 They stroll through aisles and aisles of deliciousness and beauty, and even though the natural light is significantly dimmed and darkened from the clouds and rain, it still seems to glow with vibrance in here. Rainbows adorn every table. The ruddy red of beets and the brighter magenta of rhubarb, royal purple eggplants and the more whimsical violet of turnips. Bell peppers that run the colors of sunsets. Blue potatoes and red potatoes and yellow potatoes, oh my. And don’t get her started on the riot of greens that fluff and sprig and pouf on every surface and from every sort of container.

It is Sansa’s secret garden that she shares with 40,000 people each and every Saturday morning.

“So, I was thinking,” Arya says as they hover over a low table full of heat lamps and hay-strewn crates full of cheeping, peeping little balls of yellow dander.

“Never a good idea,” Sansa says, shouldering her canvas tote full of micro greens in order to cup a chick in two hands and bring it to her face. “Hello, little lovebug,” she coos, though when the overprotective vendor sees her she hastily sets the chick back down with its siblings.

“Har har,” Arya says offhandedly as they move on towards the flowers. “Seriously though, I really would like to earn more money in order to get a better ride. I could get a fixer-upper car for the same price as an electric bike. Plus Robb can always work on it for me.”

“Arya,” Sansa says with a sigh. “I can only afford to pay you three days a week, and I’m barely even able to afford that and still afford the kind of food I want to make. I can’t even afford insurance on the truck yet.”

“Are you kidding me?” Margaery says as she materializes beside the sisters amid the irises and jonquils. “You don’t have it insured?” All previous arugula-related anger seems to have disappeared, along with the majority of her poppy-colored lipstick.

“Well, I did, but I fell off a few months ago.”

“Oh, you mean when I started working for you.”

Sansa bites her lip and develops a very intense fascination with a packet of chemical free pesticide on a nearby table.

“Sansa Stark. For god’s sake, woman, you _have_ to insure that truck. It’s your business! Your livelihood! Your _legacy,_ ” Margaery finishes in low ominous tones.

“I know, I know, I know. And don’t give me that look, Arya. I didn’t give up the insurance just to hire you. I _had_ to hire you because business is booming towards the end of the week. I can’t afford to lose customers. Once we get a little more padding, then of _course_ I’ll insure it. Now, back to you, missy, did you wrangle a good deal out of your boyfriend?”

Margaery is all narrowed cat-eyed glare at Sansa until mention of Bronn, and then she beams.

“Got him at half off, just like I wanted,” she says cheerfully. “Although I’ll have to blow him later.”

“My condolences,” Arya says with the roll of her eyes.

“Nah, it’s all right,” Margaery waves off. “I was going to do it anyways. Not that he knew that, the big old dummy.”

“You don’t know the _half_ of old,” Arya says.

Sansa pins her with a steely look, but Arya gives her a wide-eyed innocent blink before turning towards Margaery with a shit-eating grin.

“What are you talking about?” Margaery says.

“Sansa hit on a senior citizen on Thursday.”

“You little eggs Benedict Arnold, I gave you my _water ice,_ ” Sansa hisses, snatching the nearly empty cup from her sister’s hand.

“A senior cit- an- wait, what exactly did you hit on?” Margaery says, momentarily speechless for the first time in her life. “Did he have a cane?”

“ _No,_ ” Sansa says. “He didn’t have a cane, and he’s not a senior citizen,” she says, stabbing Arya’s spoon into the melting ice and slurping it up. “He’s just, you know, he’s um,” she says, waving the spoon now in the air as she tries to find words that won’t make her sound absolutely insane.

He looks like a ruthless history professor?

No, that won’t do.

“He’s um. He’s tall.”

Yeah. That’ll do juuuust great.

“He’s over there, actually,” Arya says offhandedly, pointing down one of the aisles with a long-stemmed rose. “Here, wanna take this to your Romeo?” she asks, offering the rose to Sansa.

“Wait a minute, where?” Sansa asks, batting away the rose with her free hand. “Where is- ohh,” she exhales, because it would be impossible for that kind of man to blend in here.

He’s not in a suit but he might as well be, considering how pressed his chinos are, considering how crisply ironed his button-down shirt is, considering how scrutinizing he looks with a pair of bifocals on as he studies the ingredients of a sack of something or other.

“That guy? _That_ guy looks like an angry high school principal,” Margaery says as she squints in his direction.

Sansa can’t help but laugh.

“Yeah, well, he- I just, I don’t know. Sometimes you gotta just, um,” she falters.

“Taste the rainbow?” Margaery offers.

Now Arya laughs.

“More like taste the Metamucil. Oh shit, he saw you,” Arya says, burying her nose in the halfway open bloom.

But Sansa’s already well aware of that.

“Mmhmm,” she murmurs after Stannis glances in her direction and then double-takes, head bowed so he can look at her over the rims of his glasses.

She resists the urge to wave, knowing full well he’s not going to wave back, but she does smile.

The vendor he was no doubt haggling with snags his attention momentarily, and after a few moments Stannis holds up a finger to Sansa, who nods, and then he hands over his money and hefts the small burlap sack in his hand before turning to stride down the aisle towards the three women. It’s not like the parting of the Red Sea by any means, but there is a reedy sort of authority he comes with, sinew and bone and marrow and mettle, and he has no trouble making his way towards them through the throng of people.

There’s not one speck of dirt or dust on his clothes, doesn’t even appear to be a single drop of rain on his shirt. Sansa stands there with baby chicken on her hands, the slight stickiness from her water ice in the corners of her mouth. At least I’m in makeup today, she thinks. At least my hair is washed and my um, my clothes are clean, she thinks, glancing down at the short little romper she’s in.

“Sansa,” he says by way of greeting, measured and even and deep. A glance to Arya and Margaery, though he makes no move to introduce himself first.

“Oh, um, okay, so this is my sister Arya, who you may recognize from the truck,” she says, a gesture first to her right and then to her left to introduce her best friend. “And this is Margaery. Guys, this is Stannis Baratheon, one of my customers. Stannis, Margaery owns a café in West Village. You may know it, it’s called Tall, Dark, and Brewdy.”

“Like someone we know,” mutters Arya, who looks appropriately chagrined when Sansa elbows her.

“Better than short and reeking of last night’s alcohol,” Stannis replies.

Arya goggles at him and Sansa hides a laugh behind her hand, which is how she also surreptitiously licks clean the corners of her mouth.

“As for your café, Margaery, no, I don’t know it,” he says to her.

“No time like the very present future,” Margaery replies.

He hums a noncommittal reply as his gaze flicks back to Sansa, who finally looks down to see what it was Stannis wanted to buy. She smiles and lifts her eyes back to his, where they are already waiting for her, guarded and steady and a blue so bright they belong in a boy’s face instead of this man’s.

“Quinoa, huh? Trying to recreate my recipe?”

That uptick in the corner of his mouth again. For some ridiculous reason it makes her heart beat a little faster. Just a little. The smallest, tiniest uptick in the thump-thump-thump, tiny like a ghost of a smile.

“It was a good dish.”

“Thank you,” Sansa says, tucking an errant wisp of hair behind her ear. He watches everything, she thinks, as his eyes follow the movement. It makes her think of hawks tracking their prey.

“Sansa,” he starts, as if she’s not already looking right at him, but then again he’s not the kind of guy to start a sentence with ‘listen dude,’ or ‘so like.’ “I’m hosting a networking function the Saturday after next, and I wondered if you might want to attend. There will be more than a few restauranteurs there, and someone who’s just starting out could benefit greatly from such connections.”

A slight pause, the pulse of jaw muscles as he works them.

“Are you free?”

Sansa cannot help but stand up a little straighter to be mentioned in, or at least close to, a sentence filled with words like ‘networking’ and ‘function,’ ‘restauranteurs’ and ‘connections.’ She’s worked her _butt_ off the past four years, six if you count the two years she spent in school, and getting a little recognition, a little bit of her foot in the door of a cutthroat world is more than a little appealing. Then there’s the fact that he had her on his mind.

“I am free, yes,” she says with a nod and smile.

Stannis returns the first gesture but not the second, not even with that little twitch of his, but he does reach into his shirt pocket and pull out a business card that he hands to her.

Stannis Baratheon 

CEO and Founder 

Detroit Online 

Riverside Marina Slip 17 

313.555.4475  


 

Arya, who is peering at the card over Sansa’s shoulder, frowns and looks up at Stannis.

“Your office is on a boat?”

Stannis frowns right back at her.

“No. I work downtown where you park your truck. The boat is my residence.”

“You have a business card for your residence?” Margaery asks.

Another frown to her.

“Of course,” he replies, as if it’s preposterous to _not_ have a business card for your home address, but then he clarifies. “I host several annual functions on _Storm’s End._ It was the practical thing to do.”

“Well, thank you, Stannis,” Sansa says, flipping the card through her fingers, watching him watch her.

Stannis nods, and just like that he’s gone, and just like that she’s standing there wondering why there are butterflies in her stomach.

“See? Taste the Metamucil, am I right?” Arya laughs as she returns the rose to its container.

Sansa swats her on the rear with the back of her hand.

“Oh, stop,” she sighs.

“Hey, I get it,” Margaery says as she watches Stannis retreat the way from whence he came, and then she grins at Sansa. “Everybody needs a little fiber in their diet, don’t they, Sanny?”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> yacht party part one!
> 
>  
> 
> [Picset](http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/175819108098/bowled-over-chapter-3)

“Oh my god,” Sansa whispers.

“Oh my _god,_ ” her dear friend Jeyne says from where she stands to Sansa’s right.

“You guys, it’s not _that_ big,” Sansa’s cousin Jon says from behind Jeyne. “I mean, yeah it’s big, but it not’s gargantuan, or anything.”

They’re standing on the dock in front of what has to be one of the biggest yachts Sansa has ever seen outside of an episode of _Real Housewives_ , and it’s sort of impossible to imagine just one person living on it, until she realizes that he’s probably got a full time crew or something. A strange thing, reconciling the idea of butlers and maids and captains and skippers or whatever, with the man who stands patiently in line for a food truck chopped salad called Kalefornia Love. Sure, he’s polished, Sansa thinks, but there’s no way in hell anyone could call Stannis flashy. Authoritative, sure. Striking in a muted way, absolutely. H-han-handsome? Maybe? She clears her throat and focuses on the yacht again, because no lie and simply put, it’s an exquisite sight.

There are countless strands of marquee lights strung up across the aft deck and the glow from them dances and bounces on the black water’s surface, lights up the marina like it’s New Year’s Eve instead of a warm night in July. She can hear a live band playing the type of songs Frank Sinatra sang, can hear the chatter and hum and swell of conversation and laughter, can see the guests mingling about even from down here. It looks and feels like champagne, makes her think of words like ‘sumptuous,’ words like ‘glamour’ and ‘refinement’ and ‘tax breaks.’ It’s hard to imagine this beauty and glory coming from a straitlaced man like Stannis, though, and it simultaneously confuses and intrigues her.

“Not that big? The damned thing has a staircase, for god’s sake,” Sansa says, gesturing to the stairs on the side of the yacht, the landing of which is occupied by a uniformed man with his gloved hands clasped benignly behind his back as he waits to escort guests up to the party.

“I thought I was dressed to the nines, but that freakin’ footman or whatever looks better than I do,” Jeyne complains as Jon takes her by the hand and drags her towards the steps. “I can see his brassy little buttons shine from here.”

“You look amazing, baby,” Jon says of Jeyne’s LBD and heels, of her updo and smoky eye shadow. “You _both_ do, so stop worrying,” he adds as he casts a glance to Sansa over his shoulder.

Sansa gives herself a nervous once-over as she smooths the sides of her dress down her hips. She had to blow the smoke off her credit when she bought this bad boy, and despite falling in love with the shimmery gold frock at the mall, now she’s doubting everything. She figured a party on a boat would be fancy (hence the $200 dress), but this is like, House of Cards fancy. This is Hamptons On The Weekend fancy. And those brass buttons _are_ pretty shiny, she thinks as the man springs to action when they turn off the main dock to walk down the little aisle towards Stannis’s yacht.

Stannis ordered from Bowl’d Over a couple of times the past two weeks, and thanks to his instructions she knows to present the business card that he gave her in order to gain entry.

“I only have the one card, but Stannis told me I could bring whomever I wanted,” she says when the footman-bouncer whatever takes the card.

“That’s right,” he says amiably, looking back up at Sansa when he hands the card back and gestures them up the stairs. “The more the merrier here on _Storm’s End._ You three have a fun time; it’s a good turn out.”

“Somehow, from what you’ve told me about Stannis,” Jeyne says over her shoulder as she tucks her hand in the crook of Jon’s elbow, “I can’t see him saying something like ‘the more the merrier.’”

Sansa tries to imagine it, puts Stannis in an ugly Christmas sweater party with a cup of egg nog and the words ‘The more the merrier!’ coming out of his mouth. Big family function, Jingle Bell Rock, the smell of turkey on the air. His arm around her waist as her siblings come spilling into the room, his fingers digging into her hip as he pulls her in for a-

“Yeah, me neither,” she says after a high tide blush and a smile she can’t get rid of.

While the image of a friendly, laid back Stannis is a hard thing to shake out of one’s mind, it disappears like smoke once they emerge onto the aft deck.

“Oh Mylanta,” Jeyne says, her eyes wide as she gazes all around.

Sansa doesn’t blame her.

Clusters of love seats and arm chairs flank the great space, cozy little nooks that are already full of patrons, while the band plays towards the back so guests can linger by the railing at the front of the boat and look across the marina. It’s even more gorgeous and magical than it looked from the dock, if Sansa can even believe such a thing. Part of the reason are the people themselves. Neat suits and dazzling dresses, the glitter and gleam of gorgeous jewelry and pearl cufflinks.

She gives herself a few moments to adjust, smiles her thanks when a passing waiter takes their drink orders and tells them to go ahead and mingle, that he’ll find them.

“Well then I want to _dance,_ ” Jeyne says with relish. “This is probably the only time you’re ever taking me some place this fancy, and I want to feel like Cinderella,” she says, taking Jon by the hand and dragging him to the cluster of people dancing in front of the band.

Jon groans.

“Does that mean we have to stay ‘til midnight?”

Sansa chuckles to herself and watches them disappear into the crowd, but the smile fades somewhat when she realizes she has no idea how to do this whole networking thing. In her purse are some business cards that she and Arya hastily slapped together at the copy store last week, but does one just hand those out willy-nilly? Do you play hard to get?

 Should she have worn something a little less revealing? While the front of her dress is a high boatneck (she’d laughed at that when she found it on the sale rack), the material falls away in the back, and she’s bare from shoulders to the low of her back where the dress comes back together in a soft, sparkling cowl. Perfect for cocktails, but networking? Sansa’s not so sure. She’s normally great at parties but there seems to be serious weight to this one; getting tipsy and kicking off her heels so she and Jeyne can dance to Earth Wind and Fire doesn’t seem like the right move, tonight.

“You seem very deep in thought.”

It’s a low, somewhat graveled voice and it’s coming from behind her, which shocks her since she’s more or less on the periphery of the party, and Sansa spins around on the toes of her stilettos to look first at Stannis’s chest, which is _right here,_ and then up at his face where he is, as always, studying her. An exhale from him, barely discernable, and he gazes down at her dress.

“Ah, so there’s a little more to the dress,” he says with a nod. “I had to wonder, judging from the back.”

Sansa gasps in surprise, channels her inner Arya and folds her arms across her chest, clutch dangling from her right hand, vaguely remembers that afternoon when he checked her out.

“Are you insulting my dress?”

The shake of his head, hands in his pockets, suit perfectly tailored. Unflappable Stannis.

“If I was insulting it you’d know. I simply made an observation. It’s a beautiful dress, Sansa.”

She slowly lowers her arms, using her free hand to smooth invisible wrinkles along with those figurative feathers he ruffled so easily a moment ago. And because she can’t seem to help it around him, like she’s trying to balance out the stern in him with the silliness in herself, Sansa flashes him a coquettish smile.

“What, this old thing?”

A rare laugh that is less a bark and more a huff, the roll of mist over water. He takes a step into her and leans in, and though his hands are still tucked out of sight and nowhere near her, it feels very much like the start of an embrace. Here in this space shaped by the curve of his shoulders as he bows his head, by the crane of her throat as she tilts her head towards his approach. Suddenly it’s starting to feel a lot more like a personal invitation instead of a business one.

“Well, now I know it’s new,” he murmurs in her ear before stepping out of her space and damn near leaving her breathless.

How in the hell does he do that, she thinks as she lets loose a shaky breath. How does that tiny little twitch of a smile make her want more? It must be that hard to get thing that always snares people. Yeah, she thinks. That’s it. Well two can play at that game.

“Aren’t you clever,” she murmurs, running her fingers through her hair before she tosses it over her shoulder as she turns away from him to regard the party.

“Oh, look, here comes my drink,” she says, gesturing to the waiter who’s approaching with a single drink.

“Gimlet, eh? Those are making a comeback?” 

He takes the martini glass directly from the man’s tray, nods his thanks before he turns to Sansa, a wordless dismissal to the waiter who, for what it’s worth, seems unfazed by the aloof chill.

“Gimlet that,” she says with a grin, lifting her gaze to his as she takes the glass from him.

He gives her a stern look and shakes his head. “That was a bad one. The second syllable doesn’t even rhyme with the one you replaced.”

Sansa sighs.

“Yeah, I know. Can’t blame a girl for trying, though.”

His trademark uptick smile, there and gone in a heartbeat. He nods towards the crowd.

 “Come with me, there are a few people I’d like to introduce you to.”

Ah, Sansa thinks as she takes a long sip of her drink to keep from sloshing it all over herself. Business after all. She walks more or less by his side, notes that he is clearly shortening his stride due to their differences in height. Sansa is nowhere near petite but then neither is Stannis; he is taller than she is even in her sky highs.

“Now,” Stannis says, cutting directly through the dancing guests, including a reluctant Jon and ecstatic Jeyne. “There’s one man in particular I think you should meet. He’s overdramatic and as randy as a teenager, but he owns several restaurants in town as well as two wine bars, all run by his pack of daughters, and judging by the amount he pays me for Detroit Online ad spaces, he’s wildly successful. You’d do well to get to know him.”

“Okay,” Sansa draws out as she ogles the crowd they’re pushing through. “What kind of cuisine?”

Stannis pauses to consider. “High end Americana with Spanish influence. Heavy on the spice,” he sums up with a glance to her. “Your food is just as good, most days.”

She thinks of how this man compliments dresses and deems that comment as on par with a 5-star Yelp review.

It feels strangely good to be hobnobbing with Stannis, to finally look and feel as polished as he always comes across, and she wonders how many Yes Men he has to beat back. Because there’s energy to him, unwavering determination and with it the power that comes from conviction. That sort of thing gives off a feeling of power that can be addictive as much as it can be absorbed like Sansa is doing now.  She’s gonna network like a _badass_ tonight.

On the other side of the boat – port, starboard, she’s got no clue – and ensconced in one of the loveseats with two women wedged in on either side is the man in question, apparently, since Stannis comes to an abrupt stop in front of him. One man is all laughter and cigarillo smoke, countless empty port glasses littering the end tables on either side of the little outdoor sofa, expensive cologne and foot-taps to the music. The other is, well. Stannis.

“Oberyn,” he says by way of greeting, just like he did to Sansa back at the farmer’s market.

“Stannis!” Oberyn says with identical, playful slaps to the two women’s thighs as he manages to disentangle himself from their legs and stand. “Our man of the evening eight nights of the year.”

“I wanted to introduce you to an acquaintance of mine,” Stannis says, taking a sidestep to gesture to Sansa like she’s one of the prizes on The Price is Right, though he would make a very confusing choice as one of Barker’s Beauties. “Oberyn, this is Sansa Stark. She mans a food truck downtown.”

If she were forced to come up with just one word for this Oberyn, she would choose Trouble. A smile like dark chocolate and a mischievous gleam in his brown eyes as he shifts his gaze from Stannis to her, and where Stannis has that hawkish studiousness, all quick flight and pinning in place, Oberyn’s attention moves like smoke, like silk, all languid and take your time. A thought pops into her head that this is likely how each man is in bed. Hastily Sansa takes a large swallow of vodka and lime and tucks her clutch under her arm so she can shake his hand and try not to think about sex.

“Pleased to meet you, Oberyn,” she says as he gives her fingers a long soft squeeze before releasing her.

Stannis clears his throat.

“Sansa. Such a beautiful name for such a beautiful woman.”

“Yes, well,” Stannis interjects, “regardless of that fact, I wanted you to meet Sansa because I know you’re looking for a new chef at- what was it called again?”

“Tapastry,” Oberyn supplies with another flash of a warm smile to Sansa. “Are you trained as a chef?”

Sansa blinks up at Stannis before turning to Oberyn and stammering out a reply.

“Well, I- I- I am, yes, I went to the Cordon Bleu Institute down in Scottsdale, but,” she falters as she looks back up at Stannis. “I thought this was about connecting with other business owners, not me handing out resumes.”

Stannis frowns down at her, jaws flexing as he chews on his information. “I wanted to invite you so you could advance in your career. Working in a food truck? I’ve tasted your food, you can do better than that.”

Sansa’s jaw drops.

“Are you _kidding_ me right now with this? You think I only work _in_ a food truck?”

“Yes, you and your sister. You’re the creative mind and she’s the grunt work.”

Sort of accurate but still, Sansa is _pissed._ She didn’t work her butt off all these years to be so dismissed. She drains the rest of her drink and sets the empty glass on a passing waiter’s tray and rounds on Stannis, hands on her hips.

“If you’ll excuse me,” Oberyn says smoothly, clearly well skilled in the art of slipping free from a woman’s anger, and he disappears in the same way that his attentions drift, gone like smoke.

“It was not my intention to insult you but to help you. One should always want to improve oneself. I started off as an intern and now run my own business.”

“Ex _cuse_ me,” Sansa snaps. “But I moved across the country for my education and then came back, I filed for permits and licenses, I _own_ that truck and I worked very hard scraping money together to launch _my_ own business, and once I’ve made enough profit I fully intend to get my own restaurant, not be a chef for someone else. I’ve done nothing _but_ improve myself since I was a kid in high school.”

Stannis looks thoughtful as he studies her, his gaze that now-familiar stare and roam as if he’s trying to decipher her like some sort of computer code. Elevator looks and a side to side sweep of her face, a long look to her mouth, and it would feel salacious if it weren’t for that focused frown he wears so regularly. He is thinking, that much is clear, but it also seems like he is reassessing and repairing, like the way Sansa’s mother would re-do her knitting to go back and pick up a dropped stitch.

“I didn’t know,” he finally says. “I didn’t realize, or rather, I should say that I didn’t see it, but now I do.”

He lets go of a breath with the slightest slump of his shoulders.  It occurs to Sansa that he is impressed, and she feels a high flare of pride in her heart to see it, however nuanced and subtle it may be in his expression.

“Why is it so hard to see?”

“You’re just so young, Sansa, I didn’t think you’d done so much so soon. It took me a lot longer to gain a foothold in my current field. I shouldn’t have underestimated you. Will you accept my apology?”

Sansa takes a page out of his book and studies him. No flirting, no guise, just flat out _looks_ at him. She lifts her hands from her hips and hugs herself, and despite the music and noise of the party, the bustle and bump and bass, it’s a still moment here, somehow a quiet one as he looks back at her and waits for the gavel to fall. That’s when Sansa notices that the guarded filter to his gaze is gone. He’s open right now. Open and waiting for her.

“You know,” she says slowly, letting her arms fall to her side as she lifts a finger to tap him, just once, on the shoulder, and he glances down at the touch before looking back at her. “I artichoke you for that underestimation.”

Stannis blinks, and then in a stunner of a moment, Stannis laughs. Its rarity and preciousness are all Sansa needs to laugh with him.

“Now _that_ was a good one.”

“I know,” Sansa grins. “And yes, I accept your apology.”

Tension drops from his expression and for maybe the first time, Sansa watches a tightly wound man relax, however minutely. He gestures to a waiter and orders her another gimlet and the aptly named old fashioned for himself. The music changes from a Dion DiMucci cover to “Fly Me to the Moon,” and then she has the surprise of her life when Stannis turns to her and holds out his crooked arm.

“Would you like to dance?”

Her jaw drops for the second time though for an entirely different sort of shock.

“You _dance_?”

Stannis huffs, which she assumes is a laugh, and nods. He’s getting easier to read, and here it’s absolute amusement. Even he must know how contradictory his ability and desire to dance with her is to the rest of him.

“Of course I dance. I was raised in Georgia and forced to go to cotillion. And my father always taught me that when a good song comes on, and a beautiful woman is next to you, the thing you do is ask her to dance.”

Logic again in lieu of spontaneity, but that matters very little to her in this moment.

“Oh,” Sansa says, and she’s only a little breathless as this iron spike of a man calls her beautiful, only a little lightheaded as she slides her hand in the bend of his elbow just like Jeyne did when she and Jon took the stairs. Suddenly, despite the cool marina breeze, Sansa feels overwarm. “Oh, well, in that case, lead on.”

“I expect I’ll have to, seeing as we’re dancing.”

He leads her to the small knot of people doing half-skilled attempts at swing or ballroom, and then he turns towards her, and her hand is in his, and his other hand rests lightly on the center of her back, fingertips warm on her bare skin after the slightest and lightest of strokes against her spine.

“You really know how to dance?” she murmurs as she looks up at him.

Stannis quirks an eyebrow as he waits to find the right beat in the song to move. “Don’t underestimate me either, Sansa.”

The chorus begins, the night breeze gusts, people sway around them. Sansa smiles up at Stannis, who seems to relax even further once she slides a hand up to his shoulder, and he gives her other hand the briefest of squeezes, presses his palm flat to her back.

“Ready?”

Sansa nods as a thrilling sear of anticipatory excitement arcs in her heart.

And then they’re off.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> yacht party part 2!
> 
>  
> 
> [Picset](http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/175855061493/bowled-over-chapter-4)

“There,” Stannis tells her after a few circuits around the outer edges of the other dancers. “You're figuring it out now.”

It’s a nice way of saying she completely bungled the steps the first few moments until he drew her closer and whispered for her to just let him lead already and to slow down. Now the band is playing “Beyond the Sea” and she’s got the hang of it, though she’s still beyond blown away by the fact that Stannis actually dances and dances well. But this is a man who does nothing by halves, that much is certain, and that has her curious about far more than just ballroom dancing. The way he watches her does nothing to stave off that curiosity, either. Plus, it’s not fair that he doesn’t have to watch their feet and can maintain eye contact in that Stannis way of his.

“Thanks,” she says with a flush to her cheeks, half pride, half embarrassment, all concentration. Watching _Dancing with the Stars_ is one thing, but actually _doing_ the thing is completely different.

“Think you can handle a spin?” he asks evenly as he turns them around so they’re heading back toward the band.

“Um,” she says, glancing down to their feet where her strappy gold stilettos flash next to his jet-black dress shoes. Her feet are already starting to hurt, and she’s worried she’ll trip and twist her ankle. She looks back up at him. “Well, what does that entail exactly?”

She’s not sure if she imagines it, but did he give her hand a reassuring squeeze, just then? His touch to her back is light and effortless, only deepens in pressure to let her know he’s about to make them turn in the small space provided for the dancers. But yes, she’s almost sure of it, that little hug to her right hand. Small like his smiles. Fleeting like his laugh. Sought after like the rest of him, she’s starting to think.

“I’m going to raise our hands, and you’re going to turn under our arms, and then come back to me. To the hold, that is,” he quickly self-corrects. “I won’t whip you around, you’ll do it at your own pace.”

“Well if that's all then sure, I’m gouda to go,” she says, and she laughs when that makes him roll his eyes.

But still he nods, guides them through the increasing crowd, rotates them in front of the upright bass, and sends them back down towards the front of the yacht. It strikes her for the first time that this big leviathan is his actual home and not some rented venue, that he eats and sleeps here, probably has his morning coffee on one of these loveseats every morning while reading his paper. And yet here he is doing the foxtrot with her under a starless sky, dressed in a killer suit surrounded by dozens and dozens of some of Detroit’s wealthiest. It makes her wonder. Does he eat breakfast in a robe? What’s it like cooking quinoa on a yacht? Do yachts have bathtubs or only showers? Is he a flannel or fleece robe kind of man? Why do I keep going back to Stannis in a robe? And then ‘Why stop at the robe?’ pops in her head, and instead of looking down at her feet she’s looking down at-

“Sansa?”

She jumps a little and stumbles, digs her fingers into his shoulder to steady herself, and he moves his hand from her back to the dip of her waist in order to grip her and hold her upright against his chest. Sansa blinks as she focuses on him. On his _eyes_ , this go round, and they’re not so guarded anymore though they still study and scrutinize like they’re doing now as he squints and regards her.

“Hmm?”

“I asked if you were ready,” he says, only a little impatiently.

Stupidly she thinks of where her thoughts just went. A sweep of heat prickles her sweat-damp chest under her dress.

“Ready for what,” she breathes. To see your robe?

Another roll of the eyes, another uptick smile.

“The _spin,_ ” he says with wry emphasis.

“Oh! Oh, yeah, sure,” she says.

She feels like an absolute idiot and far clumsier now than before, because with the hammering of her heart and the dizziness she feels that has nothing to do with dancing, Sansa now realizes without a doubt that she’s got a crush on this man.

“All right, get ready now.”

His hand leaves her waist, fingertips drifts across her spine, and he lifts their clasped hands at the same time the touch completely leaves her back. He takes a step away from her, still in time to the music and the rhythm, and he’s watching as she walks under their arms and does a little turn away from him, her hand still in his. She sees everyone dancing and the lights on the water, sees Jeyne wave enthusiastically from the sidelines where she stands next to Jon – “Go Sansa! Get it!” she shrieks – and the band and the waiters, and then she’s back in his arms – the hold, he called it – and smiling breathlessly up at him, and _there,_ right there in that moment, Sansa catches a sincere, true blue smile on his face.

“Bravo,” he says, and there’s only a little bit of sarcastic tease to the deep timbre of his voice. “Now, that wasn’t so bad was it?”

“No, it wasn’t,” Sansa says, and she finds that even though the balls of her feet ache, she’s feeling far more confident now, the spin having shaken off the residual anxiety about tripping and falling.

They finish out the song and by the time they push through the others to leave the dance floor, their waiter emerges with a condensation-fogged gimlet that glows palest green under the lights, and an old fashioned that shines like amber. She thanks the man profusely as Stannis lifts first her drink off the tray, which he hands to her, and then his own. It’s cold and refreshing and emboldening, and she takes a few small fortifying sips.

“Are you tired?” he asks over the rim of his glass, his left hand once more in his pocket like he’s in some stringent sort of GQ photoshoot.

“Not at all, but can we sit down somewhere? My feet hurt. Unless, I mean, I know you’re the host and probably need to mingle. I don’t mean to monopolize your time.”

“We’re all adults, here,” he says with a shrug, and because she’s probably young enough to be his daughter, she appreciates the inclusive ‘we’ he gives her. “They can take care of themselves.”

Stannis scans the deck with his familiar scowl and tight jaw, but each and every loveseat and armchair is taken, and with a sigh of exasperation he turns to her.

“There’s nothing out here. Let’s go inside,” he says.

And just like that she’s about to get a peek into the private sphere of Stannis’s life. But if she thought it was just an indoor space for the two of them, she is wrong; the party is indoors as well, people milling around in the living room and by the chafing dishes and platters of professionally catered food spread out on his massive dining room table. She has half a mind to scold him for not giving her the business, but the idea of feeding 200 people is too daunting. Never mind the fact that she’d be here in her shitty work clothes instead of a fabulous dress, hair a mess instead of a sleek waterfall of red, makeup nonexistent instead of meticulously applied.

There’s too big of a crowd to catch the décor’s vibe, but from what she can see it is modern, functional, clean lines and little, if any, clutter. No big surprise, there.

“Let’s sit there before it gets swallowed up by the masses,” he says, gesturing with drink in hand to a far corner in the back where a long sofa hugs the adjoining walls and forms an L.

He guides her towards it with another touch to the small of her back. She knows it’s old school formality but there’s a hint of masculine possessiveness to it that she finds she likes. It’s a lot different from the men her age flinging open a door and waving her through before it bangs her on the butt, that’s for sure.

They each claim a different side of the L-shaped sofa, Stannis with his back against the cushion and his long legs splayed and cocked at the knees, and Sansa perched on the edge with her legs crossed, elbow on her knee and chin in her hand as she sips her drink. Her gaze lands on him and she finds the courage to keep it trained there. She’s never been brazen enough to outwardly stare at someone but it doesn’t seem to make him uncomfortable, and so she doesn’t bother hiding her interest by fidgeting or pretending to people watch.

She is Stannis watching now.

“Better?” He juts out his chin in the direction of her feet.

“Much,” she says with a sigh, and then she grins at him. “These shoes are unpearable.”

“Horrible,” he says with a snort of a laugh and the shaking of his head.

“So,” she says, taking another sip before setting the cocktail down on the glass-top ottoman table in front of them. “I told you a bit about my journey here; culinary school, food trucks, business ownership,” she says, ticking them off her fingers.

“You did, yes,” he says, taking a sip of his own drink before resting it on his knee.

“Well, what about you? You said it took you a long time to get where you are.”

He exhales a chuckle through his nose, stares up at nothing and tips his head back until it rests against the wall – do boats have walls? Is it a hull? Or is that only the boat parts under water? She decides to look up yachts later.

“I found out my brother was embezzling money from the business my grandfather started.”

Sansa blinks, looks at him where he rolls his head to the side in order to look at her.

“I um, so what does that have to do with an online newspaper?”

Uptick smile.

“He was CEO. I was CFO. So when I came to him and tried to expose him, it was within his power to fire me.”

His jaw muscles are working double time now and the once loose grip on his lowball glass is now tight enough to make his knuckles whiten. When a waiter approaches to ask if they need anything, he waves her away in order to maintain the privacy of exclusive company, the intimacy of conversation.

“It still upsets you, doesn’t it.”

Not a question because she’s confident in her observation.

Stannis snorts and rights his head to look at her. He opens his mouth, pauses, and then nods. “I worked myself to the _bone_ for that company.”

Sansa thinks of cutting 50lbs of potatoes until she could slice and dice and peel them to perfection. Slashed fingers and burned forearms. Mother sauces she ruined over and over. Cooking proteins that made her stomach turn when she thought of where they came from. She nods her understanding and sips her drink.

“So what happened?”

“I reached out to one of my ex staff and got him to start gathering information. I bought the domain name for Detroit Online and once I had enough evidence against my brother I exposed him. The newspaper part just slowly started to fall into place as people reached out asking for more investigative journalism.”

Sansa cannot help but stare at him, and for such a myriad list of reasons that her brain can hardly settle on just one. Family betrayal, undercover operatives, how damn _sexy_ it all is to her, but also how _sad._ She’s frowning as she moves to rest her glass on her knee where her elbow was, and she gazes into it as she traces the lip of it with a fingertip. As expected, when she finally looks at him he’s already there, looking at her and waiting.

“You didn’t feel like you betrayed your family, ratting him out like that?”

Stannis shakes his head, left and right, just once.

“No, he betrayed me. I can’t abide by liars and cheats. Especially in my own family. Especially treating my grandfather’s company that way. It was wrong.”

“What happened to the company?”

“My younger brother Renly runs it now. He still maintains the fair-trade deal I had set up so many years ago. Not sure if the product is the same but the impact behind it is. That’s all that matters.”

“Why don’t you go back? You could sell Detroit Online and just, I don’t know, go be the CFO again.”

One of those rare smiles, almost a grin when compared to the norm.

“As it turns out, I’m rather fond of the whole whistle blowing procedure. We’ve exposed a lot of bad men through the paper. The other parts aren’t so interesting, the lifestyle and sports sections are a complete bore, but the editorials and exposes are the company’s bread and butter.”

“Wow,” Sansa murmurs, setting her gimlet down to sit back against the cushions.

“You’re appalled by my actions?”

They gaze at one another before he takes a long swallow of his drink, long and deep enough to drain it. Sansa watches the bob of his Adam’s apple, the stretch of his throat as his head tips back, the angles of him, all edge and muscle and, she’s starting to realize, the tension and fatigue that comes from carrying around so much baggage. He lets out a breath as he leans forward to set his glass beside hers, the single square ice chunk clinking inside as he does so.

“No, no, it’s not that, it’s just, I would try to reason with my brother or sister, I would try anything before turning them in. I mean, yes it was a crime, but it wasn’t like it was murder or anything.”

“You’re loyal,” he says quietly, and it’s a musing on his behalf as he rubs the five o’clock shadow on his chin.

Sansa smiles and shrugs a shoulder best she can in her repose.

“It’s family.”

“Yes, well,” Stannis says. “You never met Robert.”

Sansa laughs and he upticks again, but when her laughter fades she frowns.

“So you’re _not_ loyal?” she says, leaning forward and slightly towards him where he sits to her right. “If not to your own brother, then, I mean, you know,” she says, dipping her head to the side as a way to finish the sentence without saying something along the lines of ‘you’re sort of an asshole.’

“I don’t do blind loyalty, no. That is the way you get hurt. Family or friend, if you trust blindly and let them walk all over you, does that deserve loyalty?”

And now there is sorrow written in the flint of him, the hard jaw and gaze, the broad of his shoulders, even sitting on an expensive sofa on a priceless yacht. Sorrow, even here in luxury. But she knows money can’t be happiness, love, trust. It’s now that she sees his loneliness. Solitary even at a party with 200 guests. Alone even here with her.

“No,” Sansa whispers.

He shrugs with a shake of his head and Sansa gazes down at her hands in her lap.

“But maybe the problem is with who you choose to call family.”

She’s thinking of her own family and how very lucky she is, but also of Margaery who chose Bronn over her parents when they refused to accept him. Thinking of Jon Snow whose mother all but abandoned him to let Ned and Cat raise him. She lifts her gaze to Stannis, and for the first time he’s looking elsewhere, somewhere in the middle distance over the ottoman coffee table.

"Whom," he corrects.

It is Sansa's turn to roll her eyes.

“If you surround yourself with good people, trustworthy people,” she persists, and here she bites her lip. “With _loyal_ people,” she adds with a pregnant pause.

Now his gaze flicks to her and pins her in place, but she’s relieved to notice that the guard isn’t back up. It’s been down all evening.

“If you surround yourself with _those_ people and make _them_ your family, then it’s not blind loyalty. It’s just what you give to the people in your tribe. Love and trust. It comes naturally then.”

He hums noncommittally and stretches out an arm down the length of the sofa’s top cushion.

“You’ve got a soft heart, Sansa. I can appreciate that, I truly can. But I am not a soft man. I try to be fair, but I’m not a soft, easy-going man.”

Sansa smiles.

“You dance like one. Dancing can be a soft thing,” she says, thinking of the way he held her up when she stumbled. “It’s romantic.”

Stannis laughs, but it’s not the warm laugh her pun elicited earlier. It’s matter of fact and sort of disbelieving. The chuckle of a critic, an agnostic, an unsure jury.

“I am most certainly _not_ a romantic man.”

“You called me beautiful,” Sansa murmurs.

“That is because you _are_ beautiful. You know it just as much as the rest of us do. It’s not romantic to state a fact.”

Sansa rolls her eyes at his stubbornness. Tries to ignore the fact that he called her beautiful again and tamps down the reflex to deny that she knows her attributes. This isn’t a moment to lie and lying is the furthest thing from her mind right now.

“Look, you don’t want to be a big softie, that’s fine. You don’t want to think of yourself as a romantic man, that’s fine too. Tell yourself whatever you want, but as an observer and as someone who danced with you tonight, I can tell you that it _is_ romantic. Maybe that wasn’t your intention, but to be honest, and I know you love honesty," she lingers.

Here he chuckles, and here she lets the booze embolden her as she drains her drink.

“The fact that you can’t _see_ that you’ve got a soft side or can be romantic, the fact that you don’t get it, that’s actually kind of hot. That’s sexy,” she says, sitting back again and gazing out at the crowd at the forefront of the living area.

Because it’s true. Men who walk around unaware of their sexiness only increase that sexiness by being so clueless about it. Otherwise they’re just strutting peacocks stroking their own abs and staring at their own reflections in store windows, hosing themselves down with cheap cologne and reassuring themselves that the world is their oyster. That’s nothing to the weathered and measured smile in the corner of a no-nonsense mouth, to the squeeze of a hand and the press of a back, to leading a dance and letting a woman go to spin away and return if she so desires. To the way a man sits a sofa the way a king sits a throne, drenched in realistic expectation, in confidence despite agitation, in self-awareness with a dash of self-deprecation that keeps a person on their toes.

She knows exactly who she’s thinking of and so she shifts her gaze to him with a half-smile on her mouth, but that’s when her heart starts to pound and her words come back to her, because he’s outright staring at her, eyebrows lifted in an expression of shock and surprise and what-the-fuck-did-I-just-hear. Oh god, she thinks. What the hell did I just _say_?

“Are you calling me sexy, Sansa?”

“I, um,” she says, grasping at straws – not plastic ones – as she stares at him and feels like she might be slowly dying of embarrassment. What the hell was I thinking?

“Stannis?” someone calls out from the other side of the boat.

“Sansa, what are you saying,” he frowns, sitting forward with his forearms braced against his knees, ignoring the plea as he pins her in place with his formidable stare.

“I, um,” she repeats. Shakes her head and tries again. “I, I don’t know, I um, I just, I don’t know.”

Stannis chuckles out an exhale as he shakes his head and looks down at the floor between his legs, rubs the back of his neck and stands up. Turns away from her, leaving her behind like those empty glasses on the coffee table, the lump of her crush on him left to melt away like that cube of ice in his lowball glass.

“You called me beautiful,” she calls out as he takes a few steps away from her.

He stops, head bowed, and he does not turn around to face her but he does not walk away anymore. Not yet.

“Stannis!” a woman shouts.

“You called me beautiful,” she says hastily, getting to her aching feet, anything to keep him from going to whoever is trying to beckon him. “So what’s the big deal if I- what’s the difference if I say something back?”

Now he turns around, quick even for him, and he eats up the meager distance he put between them mere moments before. Kissing close, dancing close, touch his chest close. So close she has to tip her head back to gaze up at him. Close enough to feel the warmth of him, however cold he prefers to present himself. Close enough to smell him, soap and faint traces of aftershave, fresh pine and the subtle scent of a meticulous and thorough man. Close enough to see him grit his teeth before he speaks.

“Because what _I_ said is true, and what you’re saying is bullshit. I am not some ladies’ man, Sansa. I know my qualities and what I do and do not possess.”

The words come out like they’re being forced through a grater, but she’s got her sea legs now with him, and where his blunt frankness would have once intimidated her, she’s been around him enough tonight to feel a little bolder because of it. And she’ll not have him call her a liar.

“Truth is subjective,” she says.

“Stannis! Mr. Baratheon!”

“In a goddamn minute,” he barks over his shoulder before looking back to Sansa. “What the hell is that supposed to mean? Truth is objective, it’s black and white.”

Sansa shakes her head, watches as he glances to how the movement tosses her hair across her shoulder. He wants me, she realizes, or at least realizes with some of that same Baratheon conviction of his. He _wants_ me.

“There’s no black and white in this world,” Sansa presses, stepping towards him. “Only grey.”

“You’re not grey,” he mutters. “Just look at you,” he says, voice above a whisper as he lifts a hand to touch her hair, though it hovers just inches away, paralyzed from doubt. “You’re vivid,” he sighs.

Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me, she thinks as she parts her mouth and pants out a desperate little breath. But he seems stuck, victim to the bear trap of his own misgivings and inaccurate self-evaluation, and he stands there, worrying his own assertions the way a dog worries a bone. So she rests a hand on his shoulder, here where it was when they danced earlier in the evening, and tries to transfer what _she_ sees, what _she_ knows to be true, through the touch.  

“Stannis,” she whispers.

He hums, a half growl, half purr sort of sound, and his eyes half close at the sound of his own name.

“Mr. _Baratheon_!” shouts the same woman from before.

“What?!” they both shout in unison as he twists his body to look behind him, as Sansa she leans around him to see what the hell is so important that it warrants an interruption.

The guests inside the yacht’s living quarters all slowly realize there’s something going on, and they stop mid-conversation and mid-nosh, mid-sip, and they drift closer to crowd around the escalating spectacle. There’s a panicked woman in the same uniform as the door guy who let them in standing a few feet away and she looks absolutely terrified. Whether it’s from the news she must share or the person she must to share it with, or both, remains to be seen.

“Someone fell overboard,” she blurts out as she wrings her hands.

So, both.

“This I’ve got to see,” a man laughs at the front of the crowd, and he and several other people push past everyone to get to the aft deck, the buzz of gossipy conversation swelling like a swarm of bees on the move.

“ _What_?!” Stannis repeats, though now he turns in full to stare at his crew member. “Who the hell falls off an unmoving boat?”

“A young woman named Jeyne, I assume, considering that that's the name her boyfriend yelled before jumping in afterwards.”

“Oh my god,” Sansa whispers to herself as she covers her face with both hands.

She always figured it would be Arya or Rickon who would drive her to death by embarrassment, not her sweet friend from high school who, now that Sansa thinks on it, really can’t hold her liquor very well. No wonder she was so over the top excited while Sansa was dancing with Stannis. Suddenly the low ambient light in here seems over-bright and glaring, like she’s a suspect in an interrogation room even though no one has asked her a thing. She feels those heat prickles again, though they have nothing to do with crushes and everything to do with mortification.

“You have to be kidding me,” Stannis says with a groan. “Tonight of all nights.”

He turns back to Sansa and rests a hand on her shoulder, lets it slide halfway down her arm. If only I were wearing something sleeveless, she thinks with a pang, because she’s pretty sure this will be the last time he wants to ever see her again, let alone touch her. She’d soak up every last moment, if she could.

“I apologize, but I have to tend to this. The publicity is going to be a nightmare, and I need to take care of it as soon as possible. You should probably go.”

“I can’t.”

Sansa wilts beneath his touch, that warm heavy weight of him that disappears when he drops his hand from her in confusion.

“What does that mean? Why?” he says, all irritated puzzlement.

She tries to think of puns and lighthearted things and fails, thinks instead of missed opportunity and the hot rush of humiliation when her friends are dragged out of the marina. She puts on a brave face and winces out a smile.

 “Because the people who went overboard are my ride home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Had to add a note thanking my noodle sisters for help with puns! THE CHAT HAS BEEN LOADS OF PUN


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Picset](http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/175998681323/bowled-over-by-jillypups-chapter-5)

 “Tell me one more time, please,” Margaery begs.

She’s lingering outside Bowl'd Over's Pickup Here window while Sansa hands out food orders. They’re at The Ice Cream Sundae 15k/5k race on Belle Isle, engine idling in the parking lot closest to the start/finish line here on the casino side of the island. Initially Margaery tried to get Sansa and Arya to join her on the 5k race, but after their hysterical laughter at the notion died down, she then suggested they come feed the masses afterwards. That they agreed to, much to Sansa’s current delight. They’re making money hand over fist, selling health food at a race full of granola-eating health nuts.

“I’ve told you like four times already,” Sansa says to her before looking up to the crowd and raising her voice. “I have a Leeky Cauldron here for Ygritte?”

“That’s me,” the woman says, bounding up happily to grab the biodegradable takeout container from Sansa.

“Why anyone wants to eat potato leek soup on a hot day after running a goddamn race, I’ll never know,” Arya mutters from the back where she is tending to tofu satays and stirring the soup.

“Hey there,” Podrick says to another customer as he sticks his head out the Order Here window and smiles his affable smile. “What can I get for you?”

“Please, just one more time, tell me how they dragged her out of the water,” Margaery says, swigging from her water bottle. “It’ll re-fuel me after my run.”

“Jon pulled her out onto the deck,” Arya supplies helpfully, having heard all the details the minute Jon dropped Sansa off at home. “There was algae in her hair and she lost a fuckin’ high heel in the marina.”

Margaery doubles over laughing.

“Oh my god,” she wheezes, holding herself around the middle as she stands there in a stoop. “Oh my god, it never gets old. I still can’t believe it. Goody two shoes Jeyne Poole, hammered at a high class function. Poor girl, that must have been horrific,” Margaery says as she stands up straight and then back into her lean against the truck.

“Well _I_ was mortified,” Sansa says as she slides two coconut flour biscuits in a paper bag before turning to grab an order of satays from Arya’s waiting tongs. “I was _this_ close to kissing Stannis, and now I’m too embarrassed to even serve him food.”

Christ, how weak in the knees she had been in that moment, watching the flex of him as he processed what she was trying to say. How breathless she had been to feel the rise and fall of his breathing when she put her hand on his shoulder. How dizzying it was, when he reached out to touch her. And all for nothing.

“What do you mean, you won’t serve him food?” Margaery asks, and then she wraggles her eyebrows like Groucho Marx. “Are you waiting until he puts out?”

“Oh, stop,” Sansa says with an exasperated sort of laugh as she shoves the food in a vegetable-based bag. “That’s not what I meant.”

“This idiot refuses to park downtown outside of Grumpy Cat’s office just because of Jeyne’s Into-the-drink selfie attempt,” Arya says, grabbing a clean dish towel to mop the sweat and the oil off her forehead and arms. “Hey baby, hand me that spatula,” she says fondly to Podrick.

“It ruined his party,” Sansa says defensively before heading back to the Pick Up window. “One Son of a Biscuit and two orders of Satay It Ain’t So for Tormund?” she says to the still sweating runner wearing a tutu.

“Thanks,” the huge ginger-haired man says as he collects his food.

“No problem,” Sansa smiles before looking back to her friend. “It ruined his party _and_ he didn’t seem very happy to be around me after it happened. We left as soon as we got them toweled off and he was nowhere to be seen when we took off.”

Sansa neglects to admit that Stannis told them to keep the towels and that she’s got both of them in her linen closet, even now. Something to remember him by these past two weeks, though considering where her mind tends to wander every waking moment, it’s probably not necessary to keep them.

“Yeah but it wasn’t your sorry ass who fell in the water,” Arya replies. “If he’s that big of an asshole to not talk to you over something someone else did, then he’s not worth it.”

Sansa takes advantage of a slight lull in customers to slump over the counter with her chin in her hand, because it’s not only the embarrassment that night that’s bothering her.

“I guess I’m worried that he’s going to think I’m immature by proxy, I guess, if that makes sense. Poor Jeyne never gets drunk but he doesn’t know that.”

“Unlike our dear Margaery,” Arya says.

“Watch it, pop tart,” Margaery says as she looks over Sansa’s shoulder and sticks her tongue out before looking back to Sansa. “But what does that have to do with maturity? Plenty of old fogies get white girl wasted, especially a at a party with an open bar. I’m sure he sees that stuff all the time.”

Sansa sighs.

“I’m worried he’s going to think I’m just some immature party girl, I guess. He’s like, you know, he’s _older_. I think he’s close to 50. 50-year-old men don’t want shrieking, flailing wild child chickadees, you know?”

“ _Tons_ of 50-year-old men want that,” Margaery laughs.

“Well, I think I know _this_ one, and he’s not that kind of man.”

“You wouldn’t want that kind of man anyways,” Podrick says evenly.

Sansa smiles and looks over at where he’s helping Arya scrape clean the grill. Good old sensible Podrick. She helped him pick out an engagement ring last Sunday and now every time she sees her sister she resists the urge to snatch her left hand for inspection.

“No I wouldn’t,” she says.

A man like Stannis, though. She’s starting to ache for a man like him.  

They have steady business for the rest of the afternoon, even a few hours later when the majority of the crowd has dispersed to either leave or explore the island, to the point where she has to 86 three dishes and has enough cash in the register to make change for any sized bill they get. It’s been a good day, and she can finally pay both Arya and her boyfriend a decent wage for once. Bronn picks up Margaery and Sansa sends her sister and future brother in law with them so she can have a few minutes to herself as she breaks down the truck for the day. As much as Sansa loves banter and fart jokes, sometimes a bit of extra work is worth it to have some silence, and Christ knows she has plenty to think about.

“I’m not an idiot,” she mutters under her breath as she dunks spatulas and tongs and forks into her mini-sink full of sanitizer.

She lingered two blocks away from Stannis’s building for half an hour the Monday after his yacht party before coming to the conclusion that there was no way in hell she could face him. Not when he ignored her after that. Not when she had to literally help Jon drag her friend out of water that smelled like the place fish go to die. I’m just the young food truck girl with the wild friends, she thinks as she wipes down the front of her fridges. He’ll never take me seriously, even after all that talk. Not when Jeyne topples overboard trying to get the perfect Instagram selfie.

She’s lost in thought and regret and a whole lot of woulda-coulda-shouldas when a woman clears her throat outside the window.

“Hey, sorry to bug you, are you still open?”

Sansa stands and turns around to see a smiling black haired young woman with a scarred cheek and bright blue eyes, hands clasped behind her back like she’s asking a teacher for hall pass instead of a satay from a food truck vendor. There’s vague familiarity about her, a quality of poise that she can’t quite put her finger on. Maybe it’s because of that that Sansa smiles and nods despite having put most everything away.

“I think I have room for one more customer, sure. What’ll it be?”

“Two Peas in a Pad Thai, please, and um, crap, I forgot. Hang on,” she says with a sheepish smile, twisting away and cupping her hands around her mouth. “Dad! What was it called again?”

A tall man breaks away from a small cluster of bibbed runners standing in the grass by the parking lot, turns to head towards them, and suddenly that familiarity and poise make a lot of sense. It’s like slow motion to Sansa when he approaches the food truck, because even though she’s never seen him so casually dressed she knows the way he walks, and no amount of running shorts and t-shirt, no amount of laced up sneakers and running bib pinned to his chest can cover up the singular stride of Stannis Baratheon.

Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god chases itself around in her head like a puppy with its tail. Instinctively Sansa brushes her upswept hair away from her face, tucks a wayward strand of it behind her ear, and it’s impossible to think of anything but the way he reached for her hair.

We were so _close_ that night, she thinks with a pang as she tries to tamp down butterflies and turn them to wolves. Confrontation has never been her strong suit, hence the disappearing trick she’s pulled the past two weeks, and she’s got a feeling that confrontation is something Stannis brooks no issue with.

Oh, but it’s hard to focus even on that. Not with that walk, not with the way his shoulders move. She knew he was in shape but she didn’t realize he was on a semi-athlete level, because even though he’s got some years on him – some, she reiterates to herself, some, not lots – he is still muscled and toned, the succinct no nonsense wiry frame that dedicated runners have. He’s clearly a father but his is most certainly _not_ a dad bod. And then he’s here at her window standing next to who can only be his daughter – holy shit, he has a _daughter,_ she realizes – lifting a guarded gaze up the length of her face until it settles on her eyes, and that’s when she realizes she’s staring. Hastily she clears her throat.

“It’s the Quinoa Talk About It bowl, Shireen,” he says in answer to his daughter’s question though he doesn’t look her way. “Sansa,” he says with a nod of greeting.

“Stannis,” she murmurs.

It’s another hot, muggy day and the temperatures in the truck have set to swelter all day which she’s gotten used to, but the sudden flush on her chest and face makes her think she could maybe pass out. Hold it together, San, she thinks as she surreptitiously holds onto the counter’s edge to keep her balance.

“Whoa, you guys know each other?” his daughter says, blinking up at Sansa before looking to Stannis, who nods once.

“We do, yes.”

Shireen seems used to his reticence, because all she does is say ‘Huh, cool,’ and look back up at Sansa.

“Were you guys here for the race?” Sansa asks before instantly closing her eyes as she suppresses a groan.

Of course they’re here for a race, you idiot, she self-scolds. He’s in a damn racing bib and his dark t-shirt shows the white salty stains of dried sweat.

“Yeah, I came to watch my dad do the 15k. He placed first in his age group and won some money for the Sea Turtle Conservatory.”

Sansa does her best not to goggle at him.

“Really! You run for charities?”

Stannis nods.

“At Shireen’s insistence, yes.”

His daughter beams.

“He likes to run so I told him he might as well put it to good use, so every year we pick a new charity. This year, it’s turtles.”

Sansa smiles at Shireen before sliding her gaze to Stannis. That guarded, covered up air he’s got is already starting to kind of kill her. Let me look at you, she thinks. You let me before. Let me see you again. Suddenly she’s overcome with sadness, a humid soak of regret and missed opportunity, a slow drowning in almosts and maybes.  

“So how do you guys know each other?” Shireen asks, snapping Sansa out of her sad reverie, and she’s all bright and merry in her floral sundress that makes Sansa feel like an utter slob in holey jean shorts and a beet-stained t-shirt.

“Sansa usually parks outside of the Detroit Online office on weekday afternoons,” Stannis replies, glancing to his daughter before looking back up to Sansa with that trademark pinning look of his. “Although she hasn’t been around lately. I had to resort to eating Keep Clams and Curry On from the Greyjoy Seafood truck the other day.” Even saying the name of the dish makes his lip twitch unpleasantly.

Shireen laughs. “Doesn’t seem too bad. I love a good curry.”

“It wasn’t as good as the food here,” Stannis says doggedly, all unwavering stare that makes Sansa sweat even more. “But I had to make do.”

“I um, yeah, I wanted to test out some other neighborhoods,” she says, eyes downcast as she fiddles with her order pads, stacking and restacking them.

“Did it work out?”

There is ice and gravel and soot to his voice that deepens it even more and she can see that his guard is right back where it was before his party, and that’s when she realizes he’s _mad_ at her. And now that he’s just a few feet away she can feel the crackle of it between them, the pop and snap like static electricity, even here where they’re both sweaty messes.

Dammit, Jeyne, she thinks with a sigh.

“Not really, no.”

“Well,” he says, and when she looks back up he’s peering in the window, tall as he is, with a frown etched into his face. “It’s pretty clear to me that you’ve already started to close down for the day. I’ll have to go another day with subpar food. We don’t want to be an inconvenience for you. Do we Shireen?”

“Not at all,” Shireen says with a smile to Sansa. She holds out her hand and Sansa reaches out the window and shakes it. “It was nice to meet you, Sansa. Have a good day.”

“Likewise,” Sansa smiles, trying to chase the sadness out of her voice.

“I would say that I will see you around, but I’m not sure that will happen if you choose to keep testing out different markets. Best of luck, Sansa,” he says before lightly resting a hand on his daughter’s shoulder to signal imminent departure.

She watches them walk across back towards that small group of people Stannis had been talking to, her heart both a heavy pound and a weightless flutter as he retreats. He’s _mad_ at her, and there’s something about that that is unacceptable to her.

“Stannis!” she shouts through the window before ducking back into the truck, untying her apron as she does so. “Stannis, wait!”

She bangs open the door and hops out, jogs around the truck towards where Stannis and his daughter are, slows to a walk when she sees he’s waiting for her, halfway between where Shireen and their friends stand, a water bottle in his hand and a look of scrutiny on his face.

“Hey,” she says, feeling only mildly out of shape when she realizes her brief sprint has her breathing a little harder than usual.

“Yes?” he says, clipped and measured the way punctuation comes across in text messages.

And now she realizes she’s got _nothin’¸_ right now. Zilch, and Stannis is not the kind of man to stand around waiting for and listening to bullshit.

“So, sea turtles, huh,” she says, wincing outwardly the moment it leaves her mouth.

He scowls and rolls his eyes.

“What do you want from me, Sansa? What is it that you need?”

A time turner, she wants to say. Anything to get back to that moment in his yacht where his hand hovered just by her hair, her hand on his shoulder, the ghost of a kiss hovering between them. Anything to make the cold steely wariness lower from his gaze so it’s nothing but blue sincerity. Forget the damn turtles, she thinks, and she shakes out her hands in front of her like they’re wet before rubbing her face and dropping them to her sides to look up at him.

“Look, I’m really sorry about my friend at your party. She _never_ drinks or lets loose like that, please don’t think we’re a bunch of rowdy party kids or anything. That’s not who I am, that’s not us at all. I mean, Margaery likes to tie one on every now and then, but I-”

“I don’t think that.”

He’s frowning, squinting in the summer sunshine as he looks at her.

Sansa blinks, shades her eyes with her hand as she gazes up at him. If he doesn’t think that, then why does it seem like he doesn’t want anything to do with her anymore?

“Okay, but you seem sort of angry with me right now? And then that night after we pulled Jon and Jeyne out of the water, you just disappeared. You weren’t even there to say goodbye.”

Stannis shakes his head, takes a swig of water with the tilt of his head that makes the sun dance along his sweat-damp forehead. Looks back at her with a mingle of distrust and confusion now.

“I’m not angry. I just don’t understand. Or rather, I suppose I _do_ understand. It isn’t the first time I’ve been rejected by a woman and I can’t imagine it will be the last.” Resignation that is not so much bitter as it is faded and well worn.

“Reje- _rejected?_ ” she blurts out, hand on her hip now as she tries to figure out what the hell he’s talking about. “You rejected _me._ ”

Stannis scoffs out a huff of sardonic laughter.

“Hardly. My suit and tie were soaked with river water,” he says with a shake of his head. “By the time I saw to your two friends, I myself wanted to dry off. But when I got back you had already left without even giving me a phone number. And then I never saw you again." He nods towards her truck. "That's why I sent Shireen over in lieu of approaching you myself. I didn't intend to be made a fool of all over again. Which I can only assume is what's happening now."

Sansa thinks back on that evening and the confusion from so many people disembarking the yacht to get a front row seat to the chaos. The wriggle and push through the crowd to try and get to her friend who was spluttering and clinging to the edge of the dock while Jon hauled himself up in order to get to his fiancée. The come and go of Stannis and crew members, the no nonsense way he barked orders and got them towels and then how he disappeared. And this whole time she's been blaming poor Jeyne for her own stupidity.

Shit.

“Oh,” she says in a small voice.

He nods with an irritated uptick smile. A Stannis smile. One she didn’t realize she missed until now.

“Yes ‘oh,’” he says. “After our conversation that night I thought you would have stuck around so we could continue. I am a man with means, I think that fairly obvious. I could have sent you home in a car later that evening. You didn’t have to leave with your friends, but when you did, it was evident that what I was experiencing was only one sided. Then you never came around in your truck. You made it very clear that you weren’t interested in anything with me. Anything _romantic_ , to use your word.”

“No, no, I was just mortified, that’s all,” Sansa says in a rush as she takes a step towards him. “I was worried you’d think poorly of me and want nothing to do with me. I know there’s, you know, a significant age gap, and I didn’t want to look like some foolish kid in your eyes. Though I imagine I probably do now.”

Another roll of his eyes, and she’s starting to freak out that it’s all she’ll ever get out of him now, but then he bows his head and steps into her. He’s close enough to blot out the sun so she can drop her hand, so she can look right up at him, and there it is, finally, the glimpse into him. The sadness and conviction and doubt and, most importantly, the want.

“I think you know exactly how you look in my eyes. I’ve already told you, Sansa,” he mutters.

“I’ve told you too,” Sansa says. “I told you how I see you, and I want- I- I still see you that way," she says, though she's nowhere bold enough right now to shout out that he's sexy. "I know you didn’t believe me then so I don’t expect you to believe me now, but I swear to god, Stannis, I-”

“I want to take you to dinner,” he says quickly, all strike while the iron is hot, all take it while you can get it, which both thrills her and breaks her heart at the same time for the desperation that is so deeply entwined with the urgency.

To further prove his point he steps once more towards her, effectively closing the distance so that he could take her up in his arms and sweep them into another dance if he so desired, not that they aren’t dancing now.

He’s got his hand on her shoulder again, that familiar half-slide down towards her elbow, and even though his hand is warm and her skin is tacky from sweat, it raises a rush of gooseflesh down her arms and back. She _thinks_ she’s smiling, lord knows she can barely feel a thing save for his touch, but when she’s got that little Stannis smile to look at again, she figures she must be, because fair is fair, to Stannis and to her. A smile for a smile. A touch for a touch, too, and so she lifts her hand and places it over his where he’s searing into her bicep.

Sansa bites her lip and shakes her head. “No.”

“No?” Incredulous, exasperated amusement.

“I want you to cook for me.”

His eyebrows raise and now she can’t help but grin, her lower lip still stuck under a front tooth.

“You want me to cook for you?”

Sansa thinks of some Sunday summer morning, wind blowing in off the river, thinks of Stannis shirtless in pajama pants, flipping eggs in a skillet, a cup of coffee at his side while she sits on the kitchen counter and watches him. She tries not to blush.

“Yes.”

“How very intimate. How can you be sure I’ll be any good at it?” As if he knew just where her thoughts went.

Are we still talking about food?

“I’m willing to risk it. Besides, you’ve eaten my food for months,” she murmurs. “I want to taste what you’ve got to offer.”

We are so not talking about food anymore, she thinks. Not with that look on his face, not with the way his thumb rubs a circle against her skin, not with the way Sansa tentatively, lightly, dragonfly-on-water settles her fingertips on his chest.

“Fair enough,” he says, inclining his head to glance down at where she’s touching him before he flicks his gaze back to her eyes. "Does this mean I get your number now? It would be nice to have a way to contact you in case you never park downtown anymore."

A smiling-to-the-moon-and-back Sansa obliges, and there is an old fashioned thrill when he doesn’t immediately have to type it into his phone, when he assures her he’s already got it memorized and will call her that evening. “Are you free tomorrow night?”

Margaery has always told her to never accept a date within a week of being asked, but Stannis is no unruly youngblood who needs to be put in line. Stannis is the kind of man who likes the line, she can tell. And so Sansa smiles and nods.

“Yes, I’m free.”

“Good. I’ll phone you later to set up a time,” he says.

"It was good to see you, Stannis."

"It was good to see you, too."

He gives her arm the briefest, faintest squeeze before his hand leaves her and there’s nothing but the breeze to comfort her for the loss. But still he stands there, such a sweet long linger that reminds her of his haste in asking her out and his apparent disbelief that she actually said yes, such a drawn out moment of mutual pining that before she knows it, she’s opening her mouth.

“Well aren’t you going to finish what you started at the party?”

The flick of his eyebrows, a blink and a double take as he regards her here in all of her unbridled brazen foot-in-the-mouth glory, a huff of surprised laughter that escapes as a snort of breath. Stannis shakes his head, and even though she knows it likely looks childish, Sansa pouts at the reaction.

“No,” he says. “I can’t kiss you right now.”

The rise and fall of a shooting star to know that he picked up what she was putting down, the plummet of a penny off the top of the Empire State Building, to know he doesn't want to kiss her yet, the wilt and decay of an unopened rose to know she's going home empty-handed with an untouched mouth. But there’s no denying the way he’s looking at her, so what gives?

“Why not?”

“I’m not going to kiss you in front of my daughter, Sansa,” he says with a jerk of his head to wear she presumably stands behind him. “No,” he says with a slow solemn shake of his head, his eyes a blue flicker as he dances his gaze from her left eye to her right before he looks down at her mouth. Sansa feels like she could float away if it weren't for the intense capture of his look. “Because when I kiss you for the first time, I want it to be a good one.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Picset](http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/176207269213/bowled-over-by-jillypups-chapter-6-sansa-is)  
>   
> 
> YES I SWITCHED STANNIS HEAD CANONS BUT LISTEN MARK STRONG IS PERFECT
> 
> PERRRFECT

Sansa is sitting in the armchair under her bedroom window, gazing out into her little postage stamp of a backyard where she grows as much of her own produce as she can, chin in one hand while she drums her fingernails on the screen of her phone in the other. She’s counted all the trees and shrubs and flowers and herbs and vegetable plants three times in an attempt to whittle away the minutes before she has to go. Her chambray shirt dress is hanging on the door to keep the wrinkles at bay while she lounges restlessly in her robe, though her makeup and hair have already been done.

Normally she takes too _long_ to get ready, waiting last minute for nail polish touch ups that take ages to dry, or deciding last minute that the first outfit she picked was the real winner. But since she knew yesterday she’d be going over to Stannis’s for dinner, all that crap was taken care of. Last night. The minute she got home. To say she’s excited would be an understatement, and the fact that she jumps with a thrill when her phone buzzes only underlines that fact. Alas, it’s not him but her sister.

 

 ** Arya:  ** So what time is ur hot date?

 ** Sansa:  ** Seven. I am already dressed and ready to go lol ugh, and I don’t have to leave for another 30 minutes.

 ** Arya:  ** U gonna bang him tonite?

 ** Sansa:  ** None of your business

 ** Arya:  ** U should have banged him yesterday

 ** Sansa:  ** Where? In the food truck? Very sanitary

 ** Arya:  ** U could put the vice back in service industry

 ** Sansa:  ** Nicely put

 

Her sister proceeds to reply with a series of seemingly innocuous emojis that, when strung together, display a decent depiction of sexual intercourse. Sansa chuckles with the shake of her head and drops the phone back to her lap in order to wait out the next half an hour.

What will he make me, she wonders when it’s finally time to get dressed, slip on her wedge sandals, grab her purse and head out, the clapboard houses in her Corktown neighborhood bright and cheerfully painted, cute like summer teacakes. What will we talk about, she thinks as she heads across town to Riverside Marina on the northern edge of the city. What will we _do_ all night, she grins as she idles at a stoplight downtown where early nightlife has already started to kick up its heels, but his words have been on constant replay in the back of her mind all night and day, and so when she can’t help herself anymore, she squeals and beats a drum roll on her steering wheel with the palms of her hands.

She’s still giddy as a school girl when she finally pulls into the upscale marina and parks. Sunlight glitters on the water’s edge as far as she can see, and all the boats make her think of big fat seagulls with blue bellies, sleepy birds swaying ever so slightly in what little current makes it in from the river. Sansa hums tunelessly to herself as she texts Arya that she’s here and to please stop sending eggplant emojis, is so distracted by her sister’s repeated insistence to ride the bang train with Grumpy Cat, that it’s not until she’s walking down the floating dock that houses slip 17 when she notices something is missing.

Stannis’s yacht.

She is momentarily dumbfounded, rooted to the spot, blinking behind her sunglasses at the slip that looks strangely small without the enormous boat in it, but then she realizes Stannis is there, hands in the pockets of his cable knit cardigan, watching and waiting for her. And oh, what a warm chocolatey feeling that is. Despite her bewilderment, she’s smiling as she drops her phone back in her purse and walks to him, and she hugs herself against the breezes coming off the river.

He’s in a white button down underneath that navy-blue sweater, in slate grey jeans and deck shoes, and she’s already touching her unbound hair in that strange mingle of shyness and flirtation, though she pretends it’s from the wind, pretends she _has_ to drag it away from her face in order to see him and not, in fact, to make him want to touch it himself. And as always, he’s got his sights set on her, and knowing now the reason why, it is a _delicious_ feeling, to be so devoured by his gaze, to watch as he squares his body up to hers so they stand face to face, when she finally reaches him. Toe to toe and heart to heart. 

“Having second thoughts? I saw you hesitate,” he says by way of greeting, though it is very clear that he’s happy to see her, even by Stannis standards.

Well, _especially_ by Stannis standards.

She smiles up at him with the roll of her eyes.

“Oh, hush,” she says, gesturing to the empty space yawning behind him. “You’re missing a gigantic boat, that’s all. Sort of stopped me in my tracks, seeing this place without that beast.”

He cracks a small smile, _a real smile,_ and half turns away from her to point to slip 18, where a powerboat with a cobalt blue canvas roof drifts, loosely moored to a cleat by its stern line.

“ _Storm’s End_ is out at the mouth of the river. We’ll take this out to her and embark before we head out on the river. We can head towards Lake St. Clair if you’d like.”

“We’re going out on the river?” she asks, feeling somewhat breathless at the idea. It’s been ages since she’s been on the water.

“Of course,” he says with a stern mouth and warmed up gaze. “It’s a boat. That’s what it’s for.”

“Oh har, har,” she says, stepping into him to give him a light shove to his chest as she flashes what she hopes is a dazzler of a smile. “I just thought you were supposed to make me dinner, that’s all.”

Stannis captures her in that moment, placing a quick hand over hers just as she tries to remove it, and he holds her against his chest, a good firm press that gives her the feeling of his heartbeat against her palm. He leans into her, the forward tilt of his head, the subtle bow of his shoulders. He sweeps his thumb down the length of her knuckles, and if the cool gust of river winds didn’t already give her goosebumps, that touch sure does.

“I have a full crew, Sansa,” he murmurs, and _Christ_ is it sexy to hear him speak of his rank as captain. “They’ll take care of everything else while I take care of you, all right?”

She nods, gutters out a breath through her open mouth, tilts her head back in anticipation of that good kiss he promised, can already feel a buzzy ache between her legs at the mere _thought_ of it, this serious man coming undone just to kiss her. But then he takes hold of the hand she’s got on his chest and lowers it to pull her towards the powerboat. A little whimper escapes her next when she realizes it’s not going to happen, not yet, but she has the dry warmth of his hand in hers as he leads her to the next slip.

Wordlessly he bends over, her hand still in his, to drag the boat by the gunwhale until it hits the bumpers hanging off the side of the dock.

“Ladies first,” he says, lifting their hands the way he did on the dance floor to let her spin.

Sansa has half a mind to do it here, but the idea of falling into the water is less than ideal. Then she’d _really_ prove that she and her friends are all idiots. Instead she thanks him and does her best attempt at dainty as she straddles the side of the boat to get in. The short hem of her dress billows up with the breeze, and when she’s over and fully aboard, she looks up to where Stannis is still holding her hand and staring at the extra view of her legs.

She took him for a breast man, originally, and now he’s checking out her legs. Apparently, he’s into the whole eight-piece chicken, as Arya would say. Sansa does her best not to blush as she lets go of him so he can climb aboard after her.

They settle themselves on opposite sides of the hard fiberglass bench-like seats, and of course a man like Stannis doesn’t bother with pillows. Before she met him, she would assume this meant stinginess or lack of style, but now she understands that it’s the concision of him, the no bullshit approach to life that little affords him the desire to indulge or zhoosh.

“I didn’t see you for lunch this afternoon,” she says as he turns over the engine and starts chugging them out of the slip.

“I didn’t work today,” he says, but then he self-corrects. “Well, I worked from home, in a manner of speaking,” he says, sliding a glance to her before taking the sunglasses hanging from his shirt collar and putting them in.

“Ah, gotcha.”

She turns away to sightsee the marina, and she can’t help but bite her lip and grin at the thought of Stannis cleaning his place, running to the grocery store, fussing like a mother hen at his crew to shape up so they can ship out. A very stark contrast to the stoic man sitting across from her with his aviators and close-cropped hair, his neat attire and that militant air about him that makes her think of sergeants and soldiers, war rooms and battle plans, big red buttons and the men authorized to push them.

When he turns them towards the Detroit River she can see _Storm’s End_ waiting for them in all her majesty, a big silent creature, an above-ground white whale, though there is something regal and elegant about her, not intimidating, not hulking. Sleek and smooth lines, crisp and clean like fresh linen. She smiles, toys with the pendant of her necklace, and still can’t quite believe she’s going to spend the evening on that thing.

“Do you like what you see?” he asks.

It’s borderline cheeky, at least for him, and she arches a brow as she turns back to him, hair swept back into a ponytail she secures with the grip of her fist at her shoulder.

“Do you like what _you_ see?”

He gives her a glare over the rims of his aviators.

“Don’t be greedy. You know I do. I’m dazzled by you,” he adds under his breath, a surly sounding mutter to anyone else though it makes Sansa’s toes want to curl right here in her faux leather sandals.

Sansa lowers her eyes, feeling greedy indeed considering she’s only ever complimented him once to his face, and in a conversation where he doubted its veracity to boot. She toys with the hem of her dress while simultaneously holding it down so it won’t make a flasher out of her.

“Yeah, well,” she mumbles, so low she wonders if he can hear it over the low purr of the engine. “You make me weak in the knees, so I guess we’re even.”

She lifts her gaze in time to see a smile on his face, though it disappears when he glances at her and realizes he’s caught.

“Well,” he says gruffly as they slow down next to _Storm’s End._ “Fair’s fair.”

There’s a crew member waiting at the base of the stairs on the side of the yacht, the same man who greeted them at Stannis’s party, and he tosses a rope that Stannis catches easily, and Sansa watches transfixed as he expertly binds them to the side of the boarding platform.

“After you,” he says.

Stannis extends his hand for Sansa’s, and this hand holding thing is something she could get used to, but then he hands her off to his employee, who holds her steady as she switches from powerboat to ship.

“Careful now,” he warns brusquely, nodding towards Sansa’s legs.

“Sir?”

“She’s got bad knees.”

Sansa’s jaw drops open, and she can feel the flush of a blush on her face and chest, even out here on the river.

Stannis instructs the man to head to the bridge and tell the First Officer to head out to open water and then follows Sansa up the stairs.

“Aren’t _you_ funny,” she says with mock indignation once they’re on deck and alone.

“From time to time,” he says, all small-smile amusement as he regards her with a gaze that lets a little lightheartedness color the edges. “On very, very rare occasions.”

He gives her a tour, taking her purse and hanging it up before breezing through the main living space she’s already seen. Dark wood surfaces, bone colored plush carpeting, dove grey sofas and the occasional crayon-and-ink sketches of lighthouses and Montauk-style coastlines with dreamy beach houses and rickety picket fences. Effortless, streamlined, sleek and uncluttered. The kitchen is modern and masculine as well, all granite and stainless steel, no-pull drawers and cabinets, a small Google speaker on the counter that’s streaming Dean Martin. The whole upper level is decorated nicely, but he snorts a laugh when she tells him so.

“That’s because I commissioned my brother Renly to do it. He has better taste than I,” Stannis says as they pass through the galley kitchen to a tiny hallway.

“I think you have good taste,” she says.

She is trailing behind him, eyes on his well-made and well-tailored cardigan. Well, eyes on his _shoulders,_ but the cardigan covers them. For now, she thinks with a naughty grin. He is tall enough and broad enough in those pantherine shoulders to fill the hallway. _Hnnnngh,_ as Margaery would say.

“In women, perhaps,” he says, light for him, and he casts a glance over his shoulder before pointing to an open door to the right. “Bathroom, in case you require it.”

It’s small but again, impeccably designed with clean lines and high function in addition to the form.

They head down a small spiral staircase and immediately Sansa can tell that these rooms are all Stannis, with nothing of his brother Renly to dress them up. It’s still masculine but far more frank, not so much sophisticated and modern as they are no-nonsense. Brown leather sofas in an informal den lined with bookcases, a flat-screen television mounted over a glassed-in gas fireplace; a small office with a modern desk and lamp, filled with even more books; two small and spartan guest bedrooms with a twin bed in each and a porthole window above them; and finally his bedroom, a great sprawling room with a couple of arm chairs, a neatly made king bed with what appear to be flannel sheets and a faded black comforter. And then, the sight that makes Sansa smile: the ironing board and basket of neatly folded clothing in front of another flat-screen television.

“You do your own laundry,” she muses.

She figured his full crew would include maids and butlers and all that crap, with lofty British accents as they defer to him as “sir” and his lady friends as “ma’am.” Margaery will be disappointed.

“Of course I do,” Stannis says. “Every grown man should do his own laundry, cook his own food, and clean up his own mess. It’s ridiculous, what some men think is an acceptable level of self-sufficiency. Treating their wives like mothers and their mothers like servants. Deplorable.”

“ _Every_ one should do that,” Sansa says with a nod of her head. “Not just men.”

Full independence is what gave her the pride and self-confidence to open her own business. _And_ to run it. Like a ship, she thinks with a smile, wondering how Arya would feel to be called First Officer.

Stannis turns to face her with a look of open approval on his face and that trademark smile tucked in the corner of his mouth.

“ _Exactly_ ,” he says with his own brand of enthusiasm, a firm nod of the head and a sharp inhale. “All right, enough of the tour,” he says. “I said I’d cook for you, and I’m a man of my word.”

He is a tidy cook with his mise-en-place already arranged behind his cutting board, is a thoughtful host as well with a bottle of red already decanted and waiting for them, and he pours her a glass of Zinfandel before pouring himself one.

“I didn’t think you ate meat,” he says, gesturing to the vegetables already prepped and waiting on the counter. “I hope a vegetarian meal is satisfactory.”

“I do eat meat, just no red meat or unsustainable fish,” she says, smiling as she swirls her glass to release the fragrance of the wine. “But a vegetarian meal is wonderful. Gotta eat your greens.”

He nods with an I-knew-it hum.

“Myself, I happen to enjoy a good steak and potatoes dish, so I opted for portobello caps with avocado chimichurri, gnocchi and green beans. I hope you like those things.”

“I love those things,” Sansa smiles as she sips her wine.

“Good,” Stannis says, and it’s not really a megawatt beam he gives her, but it’s a genuine smile all the same, however small it may be.

He seasons and slices, sautés and stirs, and Sansa sits on the opposite counter and watches, not bothering to hide how impressed she is as he works. She wishes he’d turn around and just damn well _kiss_ her already, but Stannis promised a kiss that was _good_ and she wants to see how he interprets that. And there is also pleasant tension here in close quarters, here where if he backs up a step he’ll bump into her knee, which happens twice and makes him freeze momentarily both times. 

They talk, too. He asks her how her day was, what culinary school was like, if it’s just her and Arya or if she has other siblings. When prompted he tells her his parents died when he was in high school, that he has a master’s degree in business and finance, that he prefers autobiographies and documentaries over fiction. They’re still chatting when he hands over his wine glass and points her towards the dining room while he takes up the rear with their plates.

It’s already set with white linen napkins and gleamingly clean silverware, two beeswax tapers flickering by apparent magic, considering they were unlit when Stannis gave her a tour. Perhaps there are maids and butlers after all, she thinks with a smile, wondering now if he put together his mise-en-place or if someone else helped with that as well.

“Okay, so let’s just get the age thing out of the way,” Sansa says as he escorts her to the dining room table, emboldened by red wine and the way they’ve settled into conversation. “I’m 28. How old are you?”

Stannis raises his eyebrows slightly as he sets down their plates at the head and to the right. But whether the reaction to her gall or her age, she isn’t sure.

“45,” he replies as he gestures for her to sit by pulling out the chair to the right of the head.

Sansa exhales and smiles her thanks, smooths her dress down the backs of her thighs before taking her seat. She’s oddly relieved that he’s not _quite_ as old as she thought. She pegged him as 50, and even though five years aren’t all _that_ much, they still make a difference in her mind. At least he’s younger than my folks, she thinks. She’s still smiling at him as he takes his seat at the head of the table. In unison they unfold their napkins and place them on their laps, and then he lifts his gaze to her.

“And now that that’s out of the way, shall we toast?” he asks, lifting his glass, and when Sansa lifts hers he gently taps it with his own. “To Bowl’d Over.”

“Oh yeah? I’ll drink to that,” Sansa says, and it’s momentarily silence while they each take a swallow of wine. “What made you think of my truck?” she asks, setting her glass down before tucking her hair behind her ear and picking up her fork.

“If it weren’t for that truck, I never would have met you,” he says evenly as he cuts into his portobello version of steak. A glance up at her. “And I find that I am immensely pleased to know you.”

Sparkles and firecrackers here in her heart to hear this man make such an honest, guileless confession. It’s a thrill to be so openly addressed, to be so openly admired. But then again, he’s no bullshit, this Stannis Baratheon, and he suffers neither fools nor wastes of time. So while it’s not the most romantic way to be complimented, it’s _truth_ from him, and that makes it all the better.

“I’m happy to know you too,” Sansa murmurs, cheeks almost tingling the flush is so thorough. “Very happy,” she adds as she spears a green bean with her fork.

Uptick smile and another sip of wine.

Another small bout of silence as they eat, but Sansa soon ends it with a sumptuous hum in the back of her throat once she has a taste of the chimichurri and mushroom.

“Stannis, this is _delicious_ ,” she says. “Seriously,” she adds when he tries to wave away the compliment.

“I’m glad you like it,” he says, and then he huffs a chuckle with a small shake of his head. “I’ll admit, it was somewhat intimidating, cooking for a chef.”

“Who, little old me?” Sansa smiles as she next goes after the gnocchi.

A snort and roll of his eyes, a wry smile back as he sips his wine.

“Here I thought _I_ was the old one.”

Maybe it’s the wining and the dining, or the surreal luxury of living on a yacht that loosens her tongue. Or maybe it’s the fact that she’s been sitting here positively thrumming with the ache to get her hands on him and kiss him. Whatever it is, it’s like the weaving of some spell over her, because overt innuendo isn’t really her thing the way it is for some of her friends.

“Old _er_ , maybe,” Sansa says, and she feels like Margaery when she gives him a sly, kitty-cat smile with her fork hovering just so in front of her mouth. “But I have a feeling there’s nothing _little_ about you,” she says before taking the bite of food.

Stannis splutters into his wine glass.

After dinner he bids her to wait a moment while he clears the table, and when she tries to help he covers her hands with his and slides the plate out of her grasp, leaving her wanting again.

“I figure you’d have your staff do some of this stuff,” she asks when he comes back.

“I told you, they’re taking care of the boat while I take care of you. Furthermore, I rarely entertain. It’s not an inconvenience by any means.”

He extends his hand to her, holding it out expectantly, which Sansa correctly takes to be the signal to rise, and she gently places hers into it, palm to palm, and he wraps his fingers over her knuckles as she stands up. It’s a slow slide apart when he lets her hand go, all catch and release, woefully short, serving only to remind Sansa how desperately she wants him to touch her, to kiss her.

“I thought you hosted several big events every year,” Sansa points out.

“Let me clarify,” he says as he inclines his head toward her. “I rarely entertain _women_.”

“Oh,” Sansa breathes, tilting her head back to gaze up at the serious of him, the steady burn, the want she recognizes all too well.

“Though I’m hoping that will change.”

“I am, too,” Sansa says, earning herself a bona fide Stannis smile and nod, that classic combination.

“Good.”

He escorts her out onto the rear deck, hand on the low of her back as is his way, to a loveseat that faces the stern of the ship, and Sansa gasps when she sees the spread laid out on the glass-top coffee table in front of it. Instantly she leaves his side, bending over with her hands on her knees to closer inspect the bounty.

There’s a tray of assorted dark chocolates and nuts, crackers and artisanal cheeses, a bowl of fresh strawberries and blueberries, a couple of green glass Perriers, two champagne flutes, and, in a sweating ice bucket on a stand beside the loveseat, a bottle of Moet & Chandon Imperial Brut, glistening out here in the dying sunlight.

“I hope it’s sufficient.” Slightly anxious, not quite hand-wringing but more insecure than he usually speaks.

“Stannis, it’s perfect,” she says, looking up at where he still stands next to the loveseat, hands in his pockets. “It’s _amazing._ ”

The uptick smile again, though this time it doesn’t go away.

“I thought we could watch the sun set,” he says, glancing at his watch. “It’s quite a view out here on the river.”

That much is an understatement, Sansa thinks as she heads for the deck railing, hands to the cold metal bars as she gazes out at the sprawl of river and the city beyond it. Skyscrapers glitter in the late waning light, windows afire like little golden wrapped candies. The sky is streaked with vivid pink and orange clouds that color the water and contrast beautifully with the cobalt sky. Kayakers and sailboats dot the river’s surface all around them, day-trippers and water enthusiasts taking advantage of the weather and warmth even this late on a Monday night. Breezes put a brisk whip to the air and to Sansa’s hair. Somewhere, on some craft somewhere, Sansa can hear the tinny blare of Rupert Holmes’s _Escape_. Stannis is a slow drift behind her, a twist of his body so he effectively is leaning beside her with his hip the rail, chest to her shoulder, his hand resting lightly next to hers.

“You’ve outdone yourself, Stannis,” Sansa sighs happily as she turns towards the warmth of his body.

Her heart leaps like a cricket when he lifts his free hand to drag her wind-whipped hair out of her eyes, his fingertips set to sear her or make her shiver or both as they slip down her hairline and gather her hair as he goes. If she thinks he’s stopping after tucking it behind her ear she’s wrong, because the touch keeps going, going, making her head tip into it like a cat, and her eyes very nearly close when his hand comes to settle at the nape of her neck.

“I’ve only just begun, Sansa,” he says, standing up out of his lean as he steps towards her, head bowed. “If you’ll let me, that is,” he murmurs, voice deep and low and rich, and she’s already got her arms up over his shoulders when he presses his mouth to hers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stannis's recipe!
> 
> https://minimalistbaker.com/portobello-steaks-avocado-chimichurri/


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Picset](http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/176270783688/bowled-over-by-jillypups-chapter-7)

Her heart leaps like a cricket when he lifts his free hand to drag her wind-whipped hair out of her eyes, his fingertips set to sear her or make her shiver or both as they slip down her hairline and gather her hair as he goes. If she thinks he’s stopping after tucking it behind her ear she’s wrong, because the touch keeps going, going, making her head tip into it like a cat, and her eyes very nearly close when his hand comes to settle at the nape of her neck.

“I’ve only just begun, Sansa,” he says, standing up out of his lean as he steps towards her, head bowed. “If you’ll let me, that is,” he murmurs, voice deep and low and rich, and she’s already got her arms up over his shoulders when he presses his mouth to hers.

His thumb slides back to brush against her jaw, and for a moment that’s the only movement made by either of them. Sansa is in a breathless lock of limbs with her arms around him, Stannis paused here where their bodies are barely touching.  But then he inhales sharply through his nose, and that’s when everything changes.

He cups her face with his other hand, closes the distance between them, and opens his mouth against hers. Sansa gasps in that briefest of moments, one last swallow of air before sinking under the intoxicating weight of the kiss as Stannis licks into her mouth. She meets his tongue with hers, arches her spine to press her breasts against him, whimpers when his hand slides from the nape of her neck down to the small of her back where he drags her in to him.

Hungry, hungry, hungry. That’s all she can think of when he kisses her because it is made of that serious drive of his, all that relentless energy, dogged and determined, demanding and forthright and _ravenous._ Whatever he lacks in finesse he more than makes up for with enthusiasm and the near desperate need she knows all too well.

Sansa _loves_ it.

The kiss breaks once, twice, as tongues draw back only to seek out again, bolder each time, more lingering each time, all to taste and to learn, to tantalize and slake. A deep hum in the back of his throat to greet the whimper in hers, gusts of panting breaths before they dive back in for more. She lets go of her own arms to release him, but only just; she clings to the back of his neck with both hands, her fingers in his short-cropped salt and pepper hair, her thumbs just under his ears as she holds him here in her space. His hand leaves her back to grip her shoulder, to sweep a hot, goosebumpy touch up the length of her arm and back down to her shoulder blade, to the dip of her waist, her hip, all before he wraps his arm around her to squeeze and pull her completely flush to him, all while still cupping her right cheek in his left hand.

Hungry, hungry, hungry, and Sansa is all too willing to sate him.

At some point the sun has set because all of a sudden the warm hot glow of those pinks and oranges, the bright flare of yellows and dusky violets, fade to the cooling ember of indigo, and river breezes turn up the chill even here where she simmers in her own arousal. It’s her sudden violent shiver that makes him pause, truly break the kiss as he pecks her mouth once more before drawing back to regard her in the dying daylight.

“You’re cold,” he says.

“Stopping is only going to make me colder,” she murmurs, sliding her hands from the back of his neck across his shoulders, down to his chest, and then around his middle to hug him.

“I have no intention of making that our only kiss,” he says with a huff as he lifts his hand from her cheek to draw her hair back with his fingers.

She shivers again, even against the heat of his chest. At once he goes to unbutton his cardigan presumably to give it to her, drawing away from her to do so, and even though she had fantasized earlier about getting him out of that thing, Sansa shakes her head and stays his hands by covering them with hers.

“Don’t be silly, then _you’ll_ be cold. Do you have like a sweatshirt or a blanket or anything?”

He pauses, thinking as quickly as he likely can if he’s in anything close to the state Sansa is with a brain like Jell-O and legs wobbly like a fawn’s. And then Stannis snaps his fingers and nods, releases her and turns away wordlessly before he stops, spins on his heel, and captures her face once more in his hands to kiss her, closed mouth but urgent, still starving.

“I’ll be right back. Go sit down, it will get you out of the wind.”

Another kiss, another gruff hum of frustration in the back of his throat before he lets her go, rests a hand briefly on her back with a gentle push towards the loveseat. He moves quickly, long legged stride back into the yacht, and Sansa hugs herself for warmth as she watches him go with an absolutely idiotic smile on her face. More chilly gusts drive her out of her stupor and she hurries over to the loveseat, curling up in the right corner with her legs tucked beneath her after she kicks off her wedges.

He was right, somewhat; the wind can’t get to her as much back here considering they’re on the rear deck. Being at the front of the ship would freeze her to the bone, but back here she’s more or less ensconced in soft, low lighting under the overhang of the bridge. She’s also treated to a blackening view of the river and the starlight glitter of downtown off shore, the bob and sway of little dots of light on smaller crafts sailing or chugging along behind _Storm’s End._ It makes her think of Stannis’s party, dancing with him under the marquee lights, his hand on her back, all the ways that night he found to touch her. She could practically purr.

“Here,” Stannis says from behind her and to her left. “I apologize for taking so long.”

Sansa jumps at his sudden arrival, cranes her neck to watch as he emerges from inside. He walks back on the deck, shaking out a bundle of blanket that she realizes is the comforter from his sprawling bed. Not one of the guest beds or even some throw blanket from the back of a couch, but Stannis’s very own.

“I hope this will do,” he says as he steps around the coffee table and tries his best to drape the huge thing around her.

It’s utter envelopment in Stannis to be so completely covered by his own comforter, and it’s so _intimate_ , only a step or two away from being in his actual bed, though if that was his thought he makes no sign of it. Simply busies himself with making sure she and the entire loveseat are covered and that no corner of duvet gets into the food on the nearby table. It smells of him. Subtle and clean, soap and expensive albeit mild cologne, the scent of warm bodies and sleep. The naughty little vixen in her – _because we all have one,_ Margaery once told her – is glad she wore her best perfume and that in the nights following this one, he’ll smell her in his bed.

“There’s plenty of room for two under here, you know,” she says as she arranges the bedding around her shoulders, taking over the reins so he can sit down beside her.

“I should damn well hope so,” he says, sliding a look her way as he sits down and pulls some of the comforter over his legs. “I meant what I said,” he says, a hand sliding over the blanket to find her knee, his other arm stretching atop the back of the loveseat as he leans into her.

“Which part,” Sansa murmurs, going for bold as she untucks her legs from beneath her to extend them out across his lap, and she thinks _I’ve only just begun,_ thinks _I have no intention of making that our last kiss_ and _they’ll take care of everything so I can take care of you._

“All of it,” he says with grunt as he hooks his left hand under her knee and tugs, wraps his right arm around her shoulders and draws her in.

Sansa thought once of him coming undone to kiss her but it seems he’s all the more gathered now, eye on the prize and relentless, and there’s nothing much more for her to do other than take two fists of his sweater and hang on as he kisses her again, mouth open at the start, tongue a push and a drag against hers. It’s all she can do not to straddle his lap even though it’s just the second time they’ve kissed, because something in his urgency wakes up the neediness in her that’s always been there and has been so rarely beckoned.  Let’s crave together, it seems to say. Let’s hunt together, let’s feast together, let’s sweat and let’s scream.

Oh god, she thinks as she breaks the kiss only to start another and another, to taste his tongue with hers and return the favor. Oh god, this _is_ a good one.

He abandons her mouth to plant kisses on her jaw, the side of her neck, whatever he can reach with the way they’re hunched into each other, and when she moans up to the stars he hums a pained sort of growl in the back of his throat. Stannis draws back and gives a miniscule shake of his head, eyes closed and forehead creased in a frown.

Not the kind of reaction Sansa wants. Now they’re both frowning.

“What’s wrong?”

“You're going to be the death of me,” he mutters, opening his eyes and lifting them slowly to hers, a study of her breasts and clavicle, her throat and mouth and finally her eyes as they regard each other, though when she bites her lip his gaze immediately drops to that.

Okay, so fine. _Exactly_ the kind of reaction she wants.

“I have thought about doing that with you since the first time I saw you hanging your head out of that truck,” he says, ghosting her hair with his fingers before he sighs and leans to the side to get the bottle of champagne.

Sansa smiles to think of it as she catches her breath and tries to gather what little wits remain scattered like rose petals all around her. Watches him uncork the champagne for what is clearly an intermission so that he can do the same as she. Stern Mr. Baratheon ordering punny menu items with a straight face and clipped voice, straight-backed and perfectly tailored, thinking about making out with the messy-haired food truck girl. It’s adorable but also impressive, this man’s poker face.

“I’ll admit, it took me some time to start thinking of you like that.”

He snorts a chuckle with his trademark smile as he pours her a glass of champagne. Hands it to her with a small shrug before turning back to pour himself one.

“I don’t blame you. I can hardly believe you’re here now.”

“Hey now,” she says, bumping his shoulder with hers as she leans in to tap her glass to his. “I didn’t mean it that way. You just play your cards _very_ close to your chest. I didn’t know you were even interested in me until we got in our little, um, disagreement.”

He looks surprised at this. Taps his glass back and looks out over the water with a thoughtful frown as he swallows his champagne.

“Even when I asked you to dance, you didn’t know?”

Sansa laughs, bends her legs where they are stretched out on his lap, effectively dragging him closer to her.

“You told me it was propriety.”

“It was so I could get my hands on you,” he says with another shake of his head. “It was such an ungodly long shot that you’d would be interested in an uptight old man like me. I had to take what I could get. But then you said what you said when we were inside, and I- Jesus. I couldn’t believe my ears,” he says, turning to gaze at her. “I still can’t believe it.”

“You better start trying, buster, because it’s true,” she smiles as she leans forward to snag a strawberry to enjoy with her bubbly.

But in truth she gets it. She was just as insecure before he asked her to dinner. Worried about being too young or immature in his eyes. It makes sense that he would have the opposite concern. He’s given her plenty of reassurance that he’s interested. She wonders if she’s been too stingy, if she’s held her cards close to her chest as well.

“You’re a man of conviction and you strive for what you want. You’re independent and self-sufficient and you’re not afraid to go out and get shit done,” she muses out loud as she leans back against the arm of the little sofa to regard him. She thinks of how he built a journalism business from scratch based on the desire for justice. “You’re confident but not conceited; that’s that sexy bit I was telling you about,” she says, pointing her glass towards his very contemplative expression, which flickers with amusement at that. “You’re tough but you’re fair, you’re fit as hell and you have _really_ good taste in suits,” she says.

He barks out a laugh at that, reaches under the comforter to squeeze her bare leg. Gives her a dry look as he takes another sip.

“I could say the exact same things about you, Sansa,” he says, but then he pauses. Reaches out to trade his glass for a shelled pistachio. “Well,” he says as he regards her with a downward glance to what little of her dress can be seen under his comforter. “I suppose I’ll have to see you in a suit first to be able to say _exactly_ the same things with all that conviction I apparently have.”

He pops the pistachio in his mouth and lifts his eyebrow at her, and even in this low soft deck lighting she can see the amusement in his expression, and his playfulness, however muted compared to other people, is plain as day to her eyes.

“I could always try one of yours on,” she says sweetly, lifting her glass to her mouth. “Though I kinda thought of that whole process going in the opposite direction with you,” she adds, thinking of bodice ripping good fun, of knocking over all that pressed and folded laundry by the ironing board and tearing his room apart.

Stannis doesn’t sputter like he did at dinner, but lord does that shut up him, and he’s a silent statue of a reclined man, save for the working of his jaw as he chews.

“Careful, Sansa,” he finally says.

His left hand is still on her knee under the comforter, and he gives it a squeeze as he pins her down with that fathomless blue stare.

“Why?” she whispers, though she has a feeling she knows why, can feel why in the ache between her legs and the racing of her heart as he leans in to her.

“That kind of talk is going to get you in trouble.”

“The good kind of trouble or the bad?” she asks as he takes her glass from her and sets it down next to his.

He twists his hips so he’s facing her best as he can with her legs still draped in his lap, scoots closer so his thigh butts up against the backs of hers, dragging her dress down with the movements, though it is by far too warm under here together with him for her to shiver at the exposure.

“You’re going to have to find out,” he says before he kisses her again, tart tangy wine, pistachio and salt mixing with the sweet of a single berry.

Right about _now_ she could shiver.

It’s only a few more minutes before she _does_ straddle him, his bedding a warm little cocoon around her as she readjusts and Stannis slouches on the little couch to better accommodate her long legs and how her knees butt up against the back cushions. He rests his head back and gazes up at her, and she’d call his expression unreadable but she knows full well what he’s thinking, especially considering _where_ she’s sitting. When she drapes herself on top of him to keep up the kissing he runs his hands down her back, under the duvet, fingertips a light press to her ass before he gives in and palms both cheeks with a firm squeeze. Sansa gasps high in her throat but his hands don’t fly off her and he doesn’t pull back this time. It reminds her of people who pinch themselves to make sure they’re not dreaming.

Thanks to the nature of their activities and Stannis’s comforter it is soon so warm in this little space of theirs that he’s out of his sweater after an awkward sit-up-and-squirm that makes a flushed and blushed Sansa let loose a breathless giddy laugh. But then he chucks the thing over his shoulder, sits up and kisses her chest where her dress has come half-undone, lets out a low growl when he pushes aside the chambray to kiss the top swell of her breast. Gone is her laughter and here come the moans, much to the ever-growing proof of Stannis’s delight.

He kisses her collarbone, his thumb the faintest drag across her nipple. Another moan out of her even though the touch is through a lace bra and her increasingly disheveled rumple of a dress.

“You’re perfect,” he says, repeating the caress just to hear her whimper, maybe to make her wiggle against him too.

“You’re drunk,” she pants against the top of his head.

“Not on wine, I’m not,” and then he presses his hot open mouth where his thumb just was.

Let’s feast, let’s sweat, let’s scream, she thinks again. Damn, but he’s going to be the end of her. Pull her apart with each touch, each quest and roam of his around what he can see and reach of her. The wonderful thing about it all though is she knows she’s on equal footing with him, that if he tears her to pieces he’ll be in tatters himself, and what a happy little scatter of lust they’d be.

Sansa isn’t quite sure how long the hot and heavy makeout session lasts. Her legs are sore from being spread to accommodate him, her lips are chapped from his scruff, and the lengthy limbo of only partially-satisfied arousal is becoming almost exhausting. But when she finally excuses herself to use the restroom – “there’s one in my room, it’s closer than the upstairs one, if you remember where to go?” – she finds out.

“Jesus, its past midnight,” she says out loud to her flushed and rather wild-eyed reflection as she washes her hands.

She wouldn’t believe it, considering the sunset was around 9pm, but she checked the alarm clock on his nightstand the second she padded in here barefoot, and sure enough, it’s 12:18am. Sansa tells him as much after making a few adjustments to her hair and her dress and returning to the warmth of their little loveseat, the heat of their affections, the wonderful way he puts his arm around her the moment she sits back down beside him.

“I know, I just realized myself,” he says. “I lost track of the time, thanks to someone I know,” he says with his uptick smile as he pours her another glass of champagne, which she happily takes as she curls up against him.

“Takes two to tango,” she says.

“That,” he says as he takes a sip from his own refill, “is not a dance I know.”

“Well what we were doing felt a _lot_ more like a tango than it did the foxtrot.”

Stannis chuckles, kisses her temple before settling back with a sigh. He bends his arm that he’s got around her in such a way that he can just manage to capture a sheaf of her hair and let it run through his fingers. She’s curled against him and he’s in the left corner of the loveseat, knees splayed to afford him a more comfortable slouch, while Sansa’s got her legs tucked up on the couch, toes wedged under the top cushion.

“Then we’ll just have to tango again.”

“Ruta _baga_ believe it,” she grins.

Now he groans.

“Oh come on!” she says with a light swat to his chest before drawing the comforter further up and around them. “That was a _good_ one.”

“I beg to differ, but at least I know a very entertaining way to shut you up.”

After he spends the next several moments making sure she can’t say a peep, he suggests they move inside in order to warm up and to tell the bridge to turn _Storm’s End_ back to the marina.

“But it’s so _pretty_ out here,” she protests. “And it’s so warm thanks to the comforter.”

“Due to other reasons, as well,” he says dryly.

“And we have all this delectable stuff to eat. Dinner was amazing but I’ve worked up an appetite, I don’t care _how_ late it is,” she says, leaning forward to pair a slice of camembert with a sturdy peppered water cracker.

“You’re the boss,” he says, reaching for his phone next to the platter, and it doesn’t escape her, that instead of excuse himself to tell his crew in person, he’d rather text them so he can stay here with her.

“Don’t let the First Officer know that,” she quips before popping the cheese and cracker in her mouth.

“I’m sure he already does,” Stannis says with amusement as he texts the bridge. He glances at Sansa when she frowns in confusion. An almost-smile. “I’ve never spent this much time on a date before.”

She’s not about to retort or to go _Awww_ or thank him, not with her mouth full, so all she’s left to do is smile at him, and the look he gives her is a crackling thing that fills her heart like spiced wine.

They pick at the smorgasbord and sip their champagne and Perrier, watch the cityscape slowly disappear from view as the yacht turns back for Riverside Marina, a massive horse wheeling to run back to the barn though they go at far more of an ambling, sea-sway of a pace. Belle Isle comes and goes as they swing back around and head west, and it is dark like a lullaby then with downtown Detroit at the aft of the ship while they are tucked away here.

Eventually they abandon the food and instead settle back to gaze out and at one another, a few kisses here and there, the increasingly somnolent roaming of hands and fingertips and sliding together of  tongues, whimpers and muted murmurs, a bit more conversation that is no louder than the cashmere sound of a crush turning into something tangible.

The boat is by far too big to rock in the water or even with the movement of a U-turn, but there is still a summer-night-in-a-hammock feel to it, with the humidity that helps somewhat to stave off the cold, with the way they settle into each other, with the drift of his hand down her arm or in her hair. Soon it becomes impossible to resist, and she finds she cannot keep her eyes open.

“It’ll be at least a couple of hours,” Stannis warns after several minutes of her dozing on him, and the drowsy drag to his voice all but proves he’s got his eyes closed as well. “We cruised upstream for a lot longer than I expected, but at least now we’re headed downstream. The current should help, and I’ve asked Davos to gun it a little faster than the speed we were at before.”

“Hey, that’s a couple more hours where you get to shut me up,” Sansa murmurs against the trunk of him, as if she’s some sort of caffeine-addled chatterbox at the moment.

A deep-chest, big-cat rumble of a chuckle that she feels more than she hears.

“I’d rather make you moan,” he says finally, quietly.

She hums, and that tempting comment is almost enough to stir her to action, to make her sit up and unbutton his shirt and climb back on top of him, and when he shifts under her she opens her eyes, wondering if he’s going to boot and rally.

But instead of strip her down or feel her up to get the party started again, Stannis simply finds the duvet in a blind grope, his head still resting against the cushion, and draws it further up their bodies. Another stroke of her hair, hand heavy from fatigue before it drops back to her shoulder and stays where it lands. The slight shift of his body as he tries to get more comfortable. The quiet chug of the engine and the gentle slop and slosh and shush of water all around, the tingling cool river breeze and the warmth of his body beneath and beside her, the weight of his arm, the smell of his cologne. The soft place to land, here on _Storm’s End._

“You will,” she says, eyes closing once more as she slides her hand across his chest to snare him, to prove that what she says is a promise. “You already have.”

His chest rises with a deep inhale that lingers a long moment before it finally escapes in a sigh.

“Good,” he says, and that’s the last thing she hears before she falls asleep.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm taking some much needed PTO so I wanted to post this before I dropped off the radar. Of course I say this but watch me tell my man that I need some down time to furiously bang out Stansa sex scenes and come up with food puns.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Picset](http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/176544302123/bowled-over-by-jillypups-chapter-8-sansa)

“Sansa,” he says, voice so close to her ear she can feel the gust of his breath at the end of her name.

“Mm,” she murmurs. “Hmm?”

“Sansa, it’s time to wake up.”

There’s no way on _earth_ anyone is getting her out of this little nest of blankets and sheets, the heat from two bodies spooned up, the warm reassuring weight of his arm draped in the dip of her waist. But then last night drifts up in her sleep-hazy thoughts like smoke. The memory of him waking her on the deck, half carrying her to his bed with the comforter draped like a clumsy cloak over their shoulders, how she practically collapsed in his bed as he covered her first and then climbed in after, how the clock blinked a neon red 4:27am at her before she closed her eyes and instantly drifted off in a sea of Stannis. 

Now she’s awake, and now she’s smiling.

Sansa slowly twists beneath the weight of him. Stannis is on his side facing her, one arm folded beneath his pillow, the other here draped over her. He looks tired even in the buttery warm morning light, but he studies her in his steady way when she finally turns to face him, her arms folded between their chests as he strokes her back. There’s the ever-present stern pluck to his mouth but his eyes are warm as he regards her. Gone is the guardedness. His hand lifts from her back to brush her tangled hair out of her eyes.

“There you are. I’ve been trying to wake you for a while now.”

The stretch of her legs before she hitches one over his, the way his leg bends to accommodate hers, the press of her heel inside the crook of his knee. The sound of the sheets shifting, the way his hand returns to her waist and slides up her spine over her rumpled dress. The faint waft of distant coffee and the smells of sleep and aftershave, deodorant and mint, the feel of flannel on her cheek as she tilts her head back to better regard him.  Slow movements but with that heavy-light drag against skin that stirs her to sleepy, muzzy arousal. But there’s a quality to the light in here, far brighter and warmer than the sun paints her usual wakeup time, that makes worry chase some of those more smoldering feelings away.

“What time is it?” she asks, wriggling an arm free so she can wipe under her eyes, noting the smudge of eyeliner and mascara on her fingers after.

“8:30, thereabouts. I figured you would need time to set up before the lunch rush, which is why I woke you.”

Sansa groans because it’s true. It takes her all morning to prep and get her truck downtown, and that’s when she’s leaving from her house. Now she has to drive from the marina all the way back home, then pick up the truck and drive _back_ downtown to park and prep. Still, the idea of leaving his bed is a painful one. 

“Have you been awake long?” she asks, anything to stall the inevitable, anything to keep his hand on her, to keep him close.

 “About an hour. I showered and had a cup of coffee but even that temptation didn’t rouse you when I tried.”

“Oh god, I’m sorry, and I’ve just been laying here like a slug,” she says, thinking of other ways he could have roused her.

A soft snort of indignation from him, the uptick smile, the roll of his eyes, all his classic expressions rolled into one like some sort of flinty croissant.

“There is _nothing_ sluggish about you.”

“That’s rich coming from you, considering you’ve been up an hour already,” she says, burrowing a little deeper into him, head under his chin and cheek to his chest.

“And I’m normally up at six, if that makes you feel any better.”

“Sorta,” she sighs.

Sansa’s normally up at an early hour too, to linger in the shower or sip her tea or putter around in the garden before getting ready for work. She has a feeling Stannis is up early to do more strenuous, serious things. Run ten miles and do pushups, research his next big headline with whatever tools it takes, make telemarketers cry over the phone when they disrupt his work. Even that last one makes her smile, though the smile fades when she realizes she has to book it, and now, in order to catch the rush and pay the bills.

“I know we can’t linger here all morning,” he gruffs with a kiss to her forehead, “but one day we will. Many, many times.”

“Oh yeah?” she says, the smile back as she pulls back from his kiss to look at him.

“If I have anything to say about it. I have no intention to stop pursuing you, Sansa,” he says, all Baratheon blue gaze and the faintest squeeze to her ass after his hand roams down the length of her back.

“Me neither,” she breathes, lifting a hand to run her fingers through the cropped hair at the back of his head with the slightest of pulls that means _kiss me, kiss me, kiss me,_ morning breath be damned.

And then a Stannis smile in the corner of his mouth, “You know what they say, after all.”

“Mm?” she says to his mouth where she wonders what the smallest lick, the dab of her tongue to that smile might do to it, to him.

“In for a penne, in for a pound.”

Sansa blinks in her post-snooze, pre-caffeinated state as the idea of kissing him melts into taken aback runoff. Did I just hear him right? Did he just make up his own pun? She bursts into laughter, best she can here where she’s still so enveloped in fatigue, in last night, in this morning, in him and this right-now moment.

“Not bad for your first time,” she says, hand to his strong jaw.

Stannis hums, kisses her mouth once, twice, before he draws back to regard her with a ruthless professor sort of look.

“Who says it was my first time?”

A few minutes of kissing make an insecure Sansa ask for a spare toothbrush, and soon after Stannis returns from upstairs with one as well as a cup of coffee. He makes the bed while she brushes her teeth, a quick and well-trained flick of the sheets and airing out of the comforter with a single shake that makes it spread out more or less perfectly. Sansa washes her face and sighs at her reflection in the mirror. Her hair is an absolute wind-whipped mess that she does her best to comb with her fingers and then the no-frills little black comb Stannis has. She glances in the mirror mid-coif to her left, sees Stannis with his hands in his pockets watching her.

“Oh, hello, there,” she smiles.

Half smile, a few steps closer. She realizes he must have changed out of last night’s clothes after his shower, another white button down with chinos this time, brown leather slip-ons in lieu of deck shoes though they’re not far off the mark. He’s handsome and pressed and crisp and sophisticated and it’s one hell of a view, but lord does it make her feel like a hot mess about to take a walk of shame, because regardless of how innocuous chambray is, the damned dress has more wrinkles than an elephant’s hide.

“I know you have to leave soon, but if you’d like, you’re welcome to shower here. I have fresh towels in my bathroom.”

She ignores the fact that this is more than confirmation that she looks like shit, because right now a shower sounds like heaven. She could even hang her dress behind the door in hopes that the steam does something for her dress.

“That would be miraculous,” she says with a relieved slouch of her shoulders.

“I don’t have much by way of shampoos or conditioners, as I’m sure you can guess why,” he says with a gesture to his hair, “but there’s a two-in-one in there. Some organic thing from Renly’s company.”

“From the company you used to be CFO for?”

She turns around to lean against the sink as he walks in the bathroom, or rather to the side of his bedroom that is comprised of a long double sink and ceiling-high mirror, the door to the shower to the right, the WC to the left. The doorway is nothing more than a large archway that separates bedroom from bath, but still he seems to fill it, all shoulders and height and uncomplicated self-assuredness.

“Yes, though it’s not like I created the formula or anything. Even when I worked there, I just focused on the figures.”

“But the fair-trade part is all you and that’s the _best_ part, I don’t care how organic it is. Does it smell like you?”

“When I use it, yes,” he says dryly.

Hands rest lightly on her hips after he comes toe to toe with her. His eyes are a riveted roam that she mirrors as she maps his face, memorizes the way his mouth can look so dour while simultaneously possessing humor and wit, that can be brutally honest at the same time so passionate and tender with her.

“Well,” she says, sliding her arms over his shoulders, loosely clasping her own wrist at the back of his neck. “I cannoli hope it smells as good on me as it does on you.”

A huff of laughter, a light slap to the side of her ass that makes her want to linger far more than it makes her want to hop to. Authoritative, sexy, accommodating at the same time since he’s taking care of a need.  

“I’m sure you’ll smell perfectly tantalizing. Now go on, get in there, you’re going to be late.”

It’s a decent sized shower for a boat, though she reckons a man of Stannis’s height would call for a design upgrade if _Storm’s End_ originally came with a smaller one. The room It’s got a seasoned-wood beam floor and tiled walls the color of a mermaid’s tail, perhaps the most whimsical part of the entire ship. And the entire shower room is small enough that the moment Sansa uses the Reach for Pure organic two-in-one, it blooms with the scent of rosemary lemon, the crisp clean scent of Stannis, the scent of, according to the bottle, workers in Kabarole, Uganda earning fair wages for their efforts.

“Perfect,” she sighs.

She lathers, rinses and repeats before using it as a hasty body wash when she realizes she’s been dallying a little too long, her train of thought suddenly switching tracks from Stannis and scents and staying in bed all day to herb and vegetable pairings and whether she has enough brown rice and black beans.

“Shit,” she says when she steps out of the shower, the glass door a lovely fog that glows white in the bright sunshine streaming in through the porthole window. “I forgot my stupid dress.”

At least I’m clean, she thinks as she wraps a slate grey Egyptian cotton bath sheet around her body, using the flap of it to tousle dry her hair before tucking it in under her armpit. And at least that Reach for Pure stuff got the snarls out of my hair, she thinks as she opens the bathroom door riding a wake of scented steam. And at least I-

Her train of thought now stops on its track completely when she stands there in the doorway, watching Stannis iron her dress, CSPAN playing on the flat screen in front of him. He is engrossed in either the chore or the news or perhaps both because it takes him a moment to notice that she’s staring at this adorable scene before her. To make it even better when he finally _does_ realize she’s there, he double takes with a look of shock on his face that soon builds into something far more heated as his gaze lowers down the length of her and then back up to her eyes.

He breathes out a laugh and shakes his head, sets the iron upright and unplugs it before turning towards her. The look he gives her is the pull of the flame to the moth, and she can’t resist it. Gone from her mind are work schedules and food prep, and all that resides there now is the thought of messing up that bed again.

“You know, I complimented that dress you wore to the party,” Stannis says as she walks towards him, all low murmur slow across the plush carpeting. “But had I seen you like this before that, I would have recommended terry cloth over anything else.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere, Stannis,” she whispers. “And I mean _everywhere_ ,” she adds as her fingers work that little tuck of towel that he cannot stop staring at.

All the breath in his body seems to leave him when she drops the towel and stands in the damp puddle of it, and his eyes roll back slightly before he shuts them. He hisses an inhale between his clenched teeth when she steps closer and rests her hands on his shoulders. His hands follow suit as if by instinct or by the puppet-string pull of her own touch, though his do not go to her shoulders but slide up the sides of her thighs to her hips. Thumbs a firm, almost hard press to her hipbones, fingertips light digs into the flesh just above her ass. Stannis opens his eyes.

“Are you trying to kill me?”

“I’m trying to sleep with you,” she says, tipping her head back when he almost reluctantly bows his in order to kiss her throat.

“We already did that,” he says dryly with a nip to her skin.

Sansa rolls her eyes.

“Have _sex_ with you then, Mr. Literal,” she says, a moan catching in the back of her throat when one of his hands slides up her ribs until his thumb is tucked behind the underswell of her breast.

“That,” he draws out slowly as he rights his head to kiss her mouth. “That we can’t do, I’m afraid.”

“What? Why? Do you have some sort of three-date rule? Or oh, god, a ten-date rule?”

She’s not a prude by any means but suddenly she realizes how forward she’s being, standing naked in front of him. To her relief he laughs, a genuine laugh that is still tinged with regret.

“No. With you I have a zero-date rule.”

His touch ghosts her skin, down across the softness of her belly that would make her self-conscious if he it wasn’t so reverential, even though he’s all muscle and runner’s sinew. Reverential, yes, but wistful too, when he drags the backs of his knuckles between the valley of her breasts up to trace her clavicle. Tiny little tastes, sumptuous samples, the ultimate test to self-control which, she’s consoled somewhat to see, is nowhere to be found in the tent of his slacks.

“So what’s the problem,” she whispers.

“The problem is that I don’t have any condoms.”

Her jaw drops.

“ _What_?”

To be cock-blocked by the very thing that is supposed to help people eat, drink and be merry in the bedroom? No fair. This could be another verse in that song by Alanis Morrissette.

Another rueful chuckle, another sweep of both thumbs now just under her breasts. It riddles her skin with goosebumps, makes her whimper and shift weight from foot to foot. Her hands on his shoulders flex and she digs her nails into him, making him hiss again.

“It’s been a long time since I had to check my supply of them. I looked last night just before motoring back to the marina to pick you up and the box was empty. _Dusty_ and empty,” he says with a chuckle. “And I don’t dare try to control myself without one. Not around you. Not inside- not when I’m inside you.”

If the touch drives her mad then his words are no help at all, words like _when_ instead of _if,_ words like _I don’t dare_ and _not around you._ She’d be lying if she said the idea that she can make this stoic man fall to pieces isn't as wild a turn on as he is. There is a bed right _there,_ she is naked right _here,_ and he is right here with her, practically shaking with crumbling resolve the way she’s trembling too. She is this close to suggesting all the myriad other things they can do without penetration, but then she remembers time constraints and how waiting for a good thing can be so deliciously rewarding. A quickie oral sex session is _not_ how she wants to break that barrier the first time, as tempting as it sounds. She wants that first kiss feeling again, except all over.

“Well, when do you think you can remember to go _get_ some,” she wheedles, hands dropping from his shoulders in defeat.

He squats down in front of her to pick up her towel, growls in his throat when he glances at which body part is directly in front of him, stands up swiftly as he drapes the bath sheet around her shoulders, holding it closed between her breasts until she reaches from inside the towel and clutches it herself.

“When do _you_ think you can lie around in bed with me all morning?” he counters.

“I don’t work Saturdays or Sundays,” she says quickly.

“Friday night, then,” he replies instantly, giving her the elevator eyes again before he sighs and retrieves her ironed dress. A sad shake of his head as he hands over the garment, his gaze a good solid thing of lust when he lifts it to her eyes. “I refuse to wait a day longer than necessary.”

 

“Okay, wait a minute,” Margaery says, leaning forward across one of the little round metal tables set out in front of Bowl’d Over. “You mean to tell me you woke up in that man’s bed, you showered in his shower, and you _still_ didn’t sleep together?”

It’s past closing time downtown, the muggy fat sun orange like a sautéed yolk still hanging in the sky, its glow bouncing off glass and steel, soaking into brick and mortar like butter on toast. There’s the usual traffic just behind the food truck but foot traffic all around them has petered out. It was a decent crowd this afternoon and Sansa has the pleasant weariness and fatigue that comes from doing her job and doing it well.

“I’ll give you the details later, okay? Let me just bask in my night and in this amazing chocolate porter, okay?”

Margaery and Bronn, Pod and Arya descended upon Sansa right as she was closing up, and they’re sitting under a multicolored patio umbrella on mismatched chairs, surreptitiously drinking beer out of Sansa’s biodegradable to-go cups. Everyone, apparently, wants to know how last night went, down to embarrassing detail. Even Bronn, who sprung for the beers, seems mildly interested, if only because Stannis is so much older.

“Oh, all right, _fine._ But if you’re making me wait then I want _details._ ”

“Sure,” Sansa laughs.

If anyone understands waiting, it’s her. And Stannis, probably.

“Can’t he get it up? He can get Viagra,” Bronn offers helpfully before slugging back some beer. “I mean, _I_ could get it for him if he wanted. Though by god I’ll never take it again myself. Worst night ever.”

“ _Ever_ ,” Margaery whispers with a shudder, eyes wide as she gazes sightlessly into her drink, past horrors of five-hour erections clearly haunting her.

Lord knows the story haunted Sansa for weeks.

“Hey, baby, you hung in there like an absolute trouper. And I massaged your jaw for like 20 minutes once the, you know, storm passed,” he says with an exaggerated wink.

“Cheese and rice, Bronn, could you seriously _not_?” Arya mutters as she flingers herself back in her chair, shoulder bumping Podrick’s as she shakes her head in disgust.

“You’re one to talk, Little Miss Eggplant emoji,” Sansa says.

“I was just trying to motivate you! You love vegetables!”

“Speaking of vegetables,” Margaery says as she aims her cup at her boyfriend where he sits across from her. “I want to talk to you about that flat of tomatoes you sold me on Sunday.”

Everyone groans, even Podrick.

Sansa sighs with exasperation through a smile, sits back and sips her beer, half-listens as they bicker and Arya and Podrick play thumb war.

“Are you guys going to see each other soon?” Podrick asks with a frown and a grunt as Arya pins him in seconds.

“Friday,” Sansa smiles.

“Well, what are you going to go do?” Arya asks. “Hey! I win the thumb war!”

“I’m having him for dinner at my place.”

Sansa bites her lip with a faraway smile, thinks of _I refuse to wait a day longer._

“Dinner and other things, am I right?” Margaery smirks at her.

Sansa would blush for having her thoughts so clearly read, but they’re all friends here, Bronn just regaled them all with his Viagra nightmare, and quite frankly she just doesn’t care.

“Other things, yes,” she answers, much to her dear friend’s delight.

“Well has he texted you yet? I mean you basically dropped trou for Grumpy Cat, he should be texting you fuckin’ dick pics for god’s sake,” Arya says, kissing Pod’s defeated thumb before going back to her beer.

Sansa frowns.

“Actually, no, he hasn’t,” she says, leaning over to rifle through her purse where it slouches on the ground next to her chair. “I was going to text him earlier, but I was running late and then the lunch rush, and having to catch up on food prep, I didn’t have time. My phone hasn’t gone off once, actually.”

“Are you kidding? I’ve been texting you all day trying to get details from your big night with GC,” Arya says with a frown to match her sister’s.

“Come on, give me a rematch,” Pod says, manually grabbing Arya’s hand and stuffing it in his hand. “One, two, three, four, et cetera et cetera.”

“Oh my god, my phone isn’t _in_ here,” Sansa says as she now frantically paws through her belongings. Ear buds, yes, Burt’s Bees lip balm and a wallet stuffed with more receipts than cash, all the junk in here except the most precious and expensive of her belongings. “Shit! Where did I leave it, the boat?”

“Looks like you got some rando coming to beg for one last fake meat burrito or whatever you call it,” Bronn says, waving a pointed index finger somewhere behind Sansa. “Sorry, pal, we’re closed!” he shouts.

Margaery sucks in a breath.

“Oh, honey, that’s no rando,” she says, cat with cream and looking just as smug as she sounds.

Sansa turns just in time.

“Hey, it’s Grumpy Cat!” Arya exclaims, dropping Podrick’s hand to shamelessly point to the man Sansa can easily recognize as Stannis.

He’s dressed the same as this morning except with a navy blazer, unbuttoned just like the very top of his white shirt, except he’s also carrying a small brown paper bag dangling by the handles from his long fingers. Stannis is purpose and stride, indifferent to the fact that she’s chilling out with a small albeit formidable pack of her friends.

“Hello, Sansa,” he says once he’s come to stand by her chair.

She swallows, is beyond grateful she made it home in time to change out of last night’s clothes, and she stands with him, wondering if she should kiss him on the cheek or hug him or shake his hand.

“Hi,” she says. “I missed you at lunch.”

“I bet you did,” Bronn says into his cup before draining his beer.

Podrick suppresses a snort of laughter.

Sansa glares at Bronn.

“I mean, I didn’t _see_ you at lunch,” she says icily to her friend’s boyfriend before looking up at the man who’s hopefully going to be hers.

Stannis rests his free hand on the small of her back, as is his way, though now his thumb brushes against her familiarly, pliable, soft, warm, where before it had been stone still and cool.

“I got to work late,” he says with a secret little smile, too small for others to notice but just right to Sansa. “It’s good to see you though. I was hoping to run into you this evening. You left this on _Storm’s End._ ”

He holds out the bag to her and she lets loose a loud groan of relief when she sees her phone.

“Oh my god, _thank_ you,” she says.

Sansa sticks her hand into the bag as he holds it open so she can grab it, resists the urge to cradle it to her chest and coo sweet nothings to it.

“Not a problem. Always happy to help.”

He gives everyone a once over, now that his mission is completed. Everyone smiles up at him, though Bronn’s is more of a smirk. If that man talks about Viagra again, I’m gonna _kill_ him, she thinks.

“Oh, you haven’t met Podrick, my sister’s boyfriend,” she says, using introductions to keep Bronn from going off the conversational rails. “You’ve met my sister and Margaery of course, and this is Bronn. He’s a vendor at the farmer’s market, but I’m not sure if you’ve ever met him there. He’s Margaery’s boyfriend.”

“Man friend,” Bronn corrects.

Margaery and Arya roll their eyes.

“Pleasure to meet you both. Arya, Margaery, good to see you again,” he says before returning his hand to Sansa’s back, before returning his gaze to her as well. “I need to get going. I have work to catch up on and a _very_ important errand to run.”

Unless she’s mistaken, Stannis gives her the fleetest of winks, quick like his smiles and almost as unperceivable. She bites back a laugh.

“Ah,” Sansa says with a smile and a ridiculous little nod, with a riot of butterflies and that buzzy feel of arousal again. “Of course. I’d hate to keep you.”

She goes only so far as to give his forearm a squeeze before he drops the touch from her back.

He says his goodbyes and goodnights, heads off towards the parking garage across the street, and she cannot help but watch the way his shoulders move.

“Someone’s got it _bad,_ ” Margaery says with a happy sigh. “I think it’s wonderful.”

“Someone’s gonna get it _good_ on Friday,” Bronn says with a chuckle when Sansa reaches over the smack his upper arm. “Hey! That’s wonderful too, right? Just, you know, without the Viagra,” he finishes with a stage whisper.

The conversation moves on quickly after that ominous comment, Margaery going back to rotten tomatoes and getting The Girlfriend Discount, Podrick asking Arya speaking of date nights, is she’s free for dinner Friday night, which only makes Sansa think of her own little date night, waiting like a gem for her at the end of the week.

When she checks her phone for all of Arya’s sexual innuendos, she sees more unread texts from Stannis, earlier that morning just after she left around 10am.

 

 ** Stannis:  ** I can’t wait to see you again, Sansa.

 ** Stannis:  ** Looks like you left your phone here.

 ** Stannis:  ** And now I'm texting to myself.

 

Smiling so hard her cheeks hurt, Sansa taps back a reply.

 

 ** Sansa:  ** I can’t wait to see you either.

 ** Stannis:  ** So, Grumpy Cat?

 ** Sansa:  ** Sorry, Arya’s fond of nicknames.

 ** Stannis:  ** Well. Glad to know I’m Grumpy Cat, after seeing all those texts from your sister light up your screen earlier. I was worried I had competition from a very ambitious feline.

 

“Arya, I’m going to _kill_ you,” Sansa hisses over the screen of her phone. “How many texts did you _send_?”

“What? You called me Little Miss Eggplant, I thought you got them!”

 

 ** Sansa:  ** Oh god, how bad was it? How many?

 ** Stannis:  ** Nothing I can’t handle. I know you like clean eating. 37 eggplants might be excessive, however.

 

Sansa laughs, goes on ignored by her friends for the most part as she returns to her texting.

 

 ** Sansa:  ** Sooo, no kiss, huh? You don’t need condoms for PDA, you know.

 ** Stannis:  ** How would you know? I’ve never given you PDA before.

 ** Sansa:  ** No time like the present.

 ** Stannis:  ** It’s the same situation as this morning, only to a lesser extent. I know I won’t be able to stop. It will have to wait until Friday night.

 ** Sansa:  ** Well what will I have to tide me over til then if not a lunchtime kiss here and there?

 ** Stannis:  ** Use your imagination. I know I will be when I get my hands on you Friday.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Picset](http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/176711215713/bowled-over-by-jillypups-chapter-9)

No amount of puttering can calm the jangle of Sansa’s nerves that are so tightly tangled with the throb and the ache that have been inside her since Tuesday morning, pangs and tingles of anticipation that have rendered her breathless all afternoon. Stannis didn’t visit Bowl'd Over for lunch today, either, and the thought of seeing him had her heart racing all throughout the lunch rush, only for him to never show. The realization that all of these feelings, the thrum and the pulse and the pound, the race and the dizzy buzz, all of them would linger until he showed up at her house that evening, that was almost enough to make her faint.

A long, sudsy bath doesn’t help, though it is almost tempting enough to make her touch herself here amongst the bath bomb fizzies that are so similar to the feelings in her heart and between her legs. In the end she resists; she’ll leave that knot for Stannis to tease free. Steam rises off her skin as she rises and steps out of the bath. Fitting, she thinks as she towels off. She is so warm within that she thinks she could breathe fire, is so stoked up and stirred up like a mound of embers someone has blown upon.

Lotion, black sundress and no bra or panties. Mascara and lip gloss, a light brush of her prized Dior foundation that she won’t even let Arya look at. No shoes. Deodorant, the same sweet perfume she wore to his dinner, no jewelry. Everything is a means to get naked, a path to freedom, a series of steps that leads to the most decadent of dances.

And then there’s the never-ending summer storm outside, typically considered a release though to Sansa it’s only another layer of tension, a reminder of the roil inside her. Each streak of lightning and clap of thunder are sensations she is already well aware of because they live inside her now. They _are_ her and they will be until a certain someone cracks her open and lets them free. They are a language she has known ever since she dropped that towel and Stannis _saw_ her and _touched_ her and ultimately let her _go_ , all for the opportunity to savor her properly. Clap, boom, sparkle. People refer to sexual chemistry as fireworks, she thinks with a smile and a shake of her head as she lays out flatware on her little dining room table, but I’m already the firework. He’s lit me on fire and I can’t stop burning. Not until he helps to put me out.

Once finished setting the table Sansa double checks her mise-en-place and that the mussels are still closed and cool in their bowl of ice in her fridge, makes sure the sauvignon blanc is chilled, stares sightlessly into the open fridge while her heart pounds and pounds. Jingling, jangling, searing, tingling, the spicy prickle when a limb falls asleep though she has never felt more awake in all her life. So much sensation, so many feelings, such excruciating sensitivity to the moment.

And then a knock at the door.

“Oh, god,” she says, straightening and shutting the fridge, doing a nervous little turn with her hand pressed to her mouth.  “Oh my god, he’s here.”

She feels like she could burst apart, blackbirds in a pie that fly and flutter and scatter with the wind, but instead she runs her fingers through her hair, inhales deeply through her nose, and runs to the door on the balls of her feet. A heartbeat of composure that does little if anything, and then she opens the door.

Stannis is standing on her covered porch, his jeans and grey henley spotted and streaked to black from the rain, holding a bouquet of white bearded irises, and he’s looking at her like he’s a hawk staring at the last hare on earth.

“Hi,” she whispers, sinking sideways into a lean against the doorframe.

“Sansa.”

 _God,_ she loves the way he says her name, gruff grate like gravel, self-possessed and confident like he’s ordering her off of a menu. Loves it almost as much as the way he snaps out of his stance and walks towards her, all sway of shoulder and bowed head as he gets close, closer, closest. He slips an arm around her waist, draws her up and out of her lean and against his chest where she rests her hands before sliding them up and around his shoulders. Flowers in his left hand down by his thigh, eyes on her like they always are, heat emanating from him the way that thunder is quaking out of her. He brings his face to hers with the firm press of his palm to the low of her back.

“It has taken me everything I have,” he says with quiet grit, “ _everything,_ Sansa, not to break down your door each night this week.”

A kiss to her throat, Sansa’s hands to the back of his neck where he’s still wet with rain.

“Then why didn’t you?”

A gust of breath against her skin, a Stannis laugh if ever there were one.

“Glutton for punishment, I suppose. Here,” he says, lifting the bouquet. “These are for you.”

If she thinks he means to let her admire them she is dead wrong, because the moment she takes them and his hand is free he walks her backwards into her house, using his momentum to lift her up in his arms when he wraps both of them around her now. All breath leaves her in a rush as she half-hooks one leg around the back of his thigh, and once he’s done burying his face in the crook of her neck, once he lifts his head to kiss her, Sansa is on him like a cheap suit, not that he’s ever worn one in his life.

She cups his face with one hand and kisses him, kisses him, kisses him, good deep rough things that make him groan from the back of his throat, that make him slide a hand down her back to hoist her up by the ass, and he gives her a full-on _squeeze,_ hard enough to make her gasp, hard enough to make her bite his lower lip.

“Bedroom,” he says, somewhere between a question and a command.

“That way,” she gestures over her shoulder, clinging to him with her other arm cinched around his neck, bouquet pressed to the side of his face like they are fauns kissing in a flowered forest.

It’s clumsy and breathless, and he walks them into the wall separating her bedroom from the bathroom before getting back on course, but it’s also sexy as hell up here in his arms, up against the muscle and the strength of him, in the vise of his grip and the snare of his want. Stannis grunts when he tosses her on her bed, pillows to her left and the foot of the bed to her right, and this room is a place usually familiar though right now it’s some swath of exoticism simply because _he_ is here with her.

She flings her arms back, flowers instantly forgotten on the faraway pillow when Stannis comes after her, a slither and a slink up the length of her body and between her legs, and she lifts them until he’s right where he needs to be here between them, and then they lock together by the ankles at the base of his spine.

“Those legs,” he says against her mouth before licking into it. “Damn those legs for haunting me.”

“Boo,” she whispers.

He grunts out a strained huff of laughter before he growls, actually _growls_ with his mouth to her collarbone. He plants kisses like seeds, blooming wonders that roam down to her breasts, her thin sundress the only thing keeping them from sinking into her skin. It’s all so unbearable and it all makes her writhe, but if she thinks she’s the only one suffering, there is no comparison to the moment when he slides his hand along her thigh, under the dress, all the way to her hip where he discovers she’s not wearing any panties.

“Christ,” he groans, pausing his current administrations to rest his forehead between her breasts. “You _are_ trying to kill me.”

“No,” Sansa says as she tugs his shirt up the length of him, forcing him to lift his head and momentarily remove his hand from her naked hip, much to her sorrow. “I’m just trying to get you in bed.”

“Oh, I’m here,” he says, shaky chuckle up there on his knees as he finishes the task for her, dragging his shirt over his shoulders and head to toss it on the floor. “You’ve got me, Sansa. You’ve got me.”

And she does. She can tell with the way he strips her naked and follows the drag of fabric with his mouth, and when her dress finally finds itself on the floor next to his shirt, Sansa has his utter and consummate adoration too, at last.  Nothing in the way, now, as she lies in an unabashed and eager sprawl before him, nothing to block his soaking her in that unwavering gaze of his.

“Perfect,” he says to himself, and the word is the barest utterance, an afterthought as he feasts his eyes on her, relentless and so hungry Sansa can practically taste it herself.

Hands follow eyes as he sweeps twin touches down her bent legs to her hips, up her waist, fingers splayed out across her ribs until he pauses and hisses an inhale. Sansa gasps and pushes her head back into the mattress when he cups her breasts with two firm squeezes, palms flattening out before he kneads them again, pushes them together as he leans over and sucks a nipple into his mouth. She holds him to her with her hands on either side of his face, bucks her hips up against his, but when she rubs herself against his jeans she frowns, because _that’s_ not fair.

“I want you naked,” she says with a whine as she undoes the button of his jeans.

“I know,” he mutters. “I’m still wrapping my head around that one.”

“Get used to it,” she says with a grin as she watches him stare at her breasts, though her smile turns to a high gasp when he palms one of them, his fingertips a drift against her nipple with the faintest of pinches.

He chuckles, vague and distracted. “Maybe one day.”

Stannis sits back on his heels between her shamelessly spread thighs as she unzips him, but once that’s done he rises to his knees and shucks himself free, kicks them off at the same time Sansa pushes down on the elastic band of his boxer briefs. And then she has him naked, long and lean, stretched out above her with the firmness of his erection pressed against the wet of her. The hair on his chest is sparse and the muscle of him is reedy, wiry, the coil of a lean jungle cat ready to pounce, but he clearly has no intention to do so anytime soon.

“Stannis, please,” she whimpers. “Please, I need- oh god, please.”

“I’m here, Sansa,” he says against her skin. “I’m finally here.”

He props himself up on his elbows, kisses dropped everywhere he can reach: mouth, ear, throat and breast, methodical and with purpose, each kiss and lick and suck and nip like punctuations to a sentence that Sansa hopes will never, ever end. The shift of his hips as he scoots down her body, more of his mouth to her skin, her belly and hipbone, the soft flesh of her inner thigh, and _then_ he noses against the heat of her, and she can hear him inhale deeply before he uses his tongue to spread her open. Sansa’s hands were on his shoulders with her nails a light dig into him, but when he sucks onto her they fly to either side of his head.

“Oh my god,” she gasps, tilting her head back with her eyes rolled shut, legs parting even more to help guide him home. “Oh my god, that feels so good, oh my god.”

A few more probes of his tongue, the push and thrust of his fingers inside her, a moan against the small patch of waxed hair there. Even though it’s not necessarily skilled it’s still nearly enough to make her come, she is that tightly wound, and he is so evidently enraptured. That reverence alone makes her squirm.

“Get up here,” she says, hands leaving his head to slide down his back as far as she can reach, and then she digs in her nails and drags up to pull him off of her so she can get him _in_ her. “Don’t make me wait anymore. I want you inside me.”

He hums against the wet, another lick and a kiss before he acquiesces, kissing his way up her body, back to her breasts before he awards her the salt of her own arousal with a kiss to her mouth. She opens her mouth, runs her tongue against his, has the pleasure of feeling his chest expand with a sudden inhale when she reaches down and takes his hard cock in hand. The kiss freezes and breaks when she strokes him once, twice, thrice, and she can feel him shaking when he lowers his head to rest on her shoulder. The shudder of self-control coming apart at the seams, the shiver of a master losing to what he truly wants.

“Sansa, stop, wait,” he finally musters, jaw tight and clenched when he finally lifts his head to look at her.

She tightens her grip to watch his jaw clench, strokes him faster to see him tilts his head back away from her so that he’s almost looking up at the ceiling. There’s power here, making this man come undone, and she’s got a thrill of arousal at the very idea of making him orgasm with only her hand.

“I want to watch you come,” she says with a smile.

Stannis rights his head instantly at that, quirks a smirk, shakes his head. Thrusts into her hand.

“Oh that’s not happening anytime soon, Sansa. I came here prepared for you.”

The implication that he got himself off before coming over, that he was likely thinking of her while doing so, is neither lost on Sansa nor wasted. It damn near makes her come at the thought of it, and she squeezes him with her thighs, moans at the thought of it. Moans in misery when he slides free of her, backing up on the mattress until he’s standing and looking down at her.

“Don’t worry, dear, I’m not rushing through this,” he says, squatting down to retrieve his jeans, and for a moment of sheer panic Sansa thinks he’s about to get dressed again, but then there’s the glimmer of gold foil in his hand, and she gusts out a sigh of relief.

“I hope that’s not the only one you brought,” she grins, watching him as he stands, tears into the wrapper, and rolls the condom down the length of his erection.

Stannis snorts, gives himself a long, slow stroke as he regards her.

“Of course not. I’m not an idiot. Lucky, maybe, but not stupid,” he says, getting back to his knees between the spread of Sansa’s.

“No, you’re not,” she says, arms lifting to wrap around his shoulders as he settles his hips on top of hers. “You’re, you’re- _ohh._ ”

Words are forgotten the moment he kisses her and pushes inside her at the same time, a good steady thrust, tip to base as he fully houses himself inside her, and his mouth tightens against hers as he groans in his throat. Sansa’s embrace opens so she can run her nails down his back, and she arches her back to press her breasts against his chest, rounds her spine to push herself against the thick thrust of him.

Mouthwatering agony. An ache so profound it’s almost an itch. Tantalization as he finds a rhythm, tentative the first few strokes before he comes at her like a bass line, firm and steady, unrelenting in the pace and the pound of him as he gets more and more worked up. She rides him like a wave, clings to him with her nails in his skin and her legs hitched up, knees pressed into his ribs as he rocks himself forward and into her. Muscles tighten, loosen, tighten again. Everything swims with the delicious anticipation of a good, strong orgasm.

Rain drums on the window and it starts to sound like love to Sansa because it sounds like satisfaction and satiation, soaks the craving earth the way Stannis is slaking her thirst, fills the air with sultry thickness the way they’re filling the room with the sounds and scents of sex, sighs and sweat and sweet deep strokes that fill her to the brim one moment and leave her empty and aching the next.

“Please don’t stop,” she pants, locking her legs around him to keep him going, going, going.  “Please don’t stop.”

“I couldn’t stop if I wanted to,” he says between gritted teeth, gazing down at her with a mingled expression of pleasure and bewilderment. “I will _never_ stop trying to please you.”

Such a statement to make when his cock is inside her to the full hilt, such a statement to make before he kisses her so thoroughly she loses her breath. Such a perfect thing for him to say when she’s this close to climaxing.

It’s absolutely _wild_ to her, that thought, because she’s only come from penetration a handful of times in her life, and here she is, stuck somewhere in the middle of inevitability and something just out of reach. The wiry black of his pubic hair is a pleasant enough scrub against her clitoris, almost there but not quite.

“Oh god, I think I’m going to come,” she cries, nails a firm scrape across his shoulder blades.

Stannis hisses at the streaks of pain though he rounds his back and pushes his body into the touch.

“ _Yes_ ,” he says as he fucks her and fucks her and fucks her, all rhythm and stride and intention, because he already said it, he’ll never stop, never stop, never stop, because even when he lets go he’s still drowning in determination. “Come for me. I want to hear you come. I want to make you come.”

“I need you to- I need to t-touch myself,” she stammers out, eyes screwed shut at the admission, and it’s only slightly embarrassing to admit with him because he’s so upfront and frank, and so she might as well offer the same courtesy.

And she _really_ wants that orgasm.

“Show me,” Stannis says, posting up into plank position with his hands to the mattress on either side of her.

His hips still rock into her but the pace is far slower, more taunt and tease than satisfaction, and he gazes at her with that look of his, blue eyes nearly black in the low light of her room. Each push of his cock inside her makes her breasts bounce, and she stifles a moan when his gaze flicks down to watch them, to see how his body’s action makes hers react. The gaze lifts again.

“Show me so I know,” he says with another thrust. “For next time.”

She’s already flushed from everything else but still, Sansa can feel the warmth of a blush on her face when she drops her hand from his back and lowers it to rub herself where his mouth had been earlier. Instantly she tightens like a vise around him, muscles a firm clamp as she helps herself out. Stannis groans.

“Jesus Christ,” he grits out, head bowing as he watches her and slowly fucks her.

“Oh my god, yes,” she whimpers.

Her hips move with him and with her, with all of it and everything in between, with the rain and the thrust and the way he just won’t stop watching her. He soaks her up and saturates her in return, and with each rub of her fingers his thrusts grow stronger, more forceful, all intention and none of the screwing around that so many of her past boyfriends called modus operandi.

“Oh god, oh god, I’m gonna come,” she says, rapid fire fast as he watches, watches, watches.

“Come for me, Sansa,” he says, pushing inside her faster and faster as she takes the rest of the matter in her own hands. “That’s it, come for me.”

“Stannis,” she moans, and when she comes she keeps her fingers busy to carry her through to the other side. “Oh my god, yes, yes, yes!”

She can feel herself pulse around him even as he keeps moving inside her, good deep pushes that only intensify the orgasm she gave herself, but soon it’s too much even for him, and _now_ she’s got the true release of Stannis, in the shake of his arms and the loss of rhythm, in the way his eyes roll back in his head now that he can stop paying attention and just Let. Go.

“Come for me,” she says hoarsely, pulling him down to her so they are chest to chest, one hand to the back of his head, the other giving his ass a firm squeeze as he rocks inside her. “Come for _me_ now, Stannis.”

“Only you,” Stannis manages to say before he shudders and groans. “Oh fuck,” he says, that eponymous word drawn out with a guttural sound that signals the beginning of the end.

She can’t feel him climax because of the condom but lord can she see it, in the flicker and burst of tension across his face, the pinched frown that dissolves into creaseless wonder, in how he instantly stills with his cock fully inside her, that one final push that solved everything, in the way his chest heaves and his head drops to her shoulder, the posture of a bound man finally unfettered and free.

The rain is a steady patter on the window behind her. Sansa’s heart is about as steady as a wild horse running across the desert. It takes Stannis a few moments to move while she runs her fingers through the short hair on the back of his head, a few deep breaths before he lifts his head to kiss her, first on her breast and then on her mouth.

“You are a glory,” he murmurs, kissing her again.

“You’re not so bad yourself,” she smiles, her wild-horse heart sprouting wings to soar at his words.

“Only because of you,” he says with a half-smile.  

They lie sprawled in a tangle of limbs after he returns from tossing out the condom, Stannis on his back and Sansa on her side next to him with her head on his chest, leg thrown over his, and he runs his fingers along her arm that she’s got draped across his abs while playing with her hair with the other hand. A lovely snare, here, a little cocoon of low wattage lighting and summer storms, the occasional rumble of thunder that she couldn’t even hear before with Stannis above her and inside her.

“That’s was an unbelievable turn on, watching you touch yourself.”

Sansa smiles with a wince.

“Really? That’s the first time I ever did that with an audience right out of the gate like that.”

And it’s true. That’s usually something she has to warm up to before she just goes to town, but oral sex is also the same and he dove right into that. She suppresses a shiver at the thought.

“I hope it’s not the last,” he says with a hummed chuckle that Sansa can feel as well as hear. “Although I fully intend to do it to you as well.”

“Oh yeah? I don’t mind,” she says, and then she lifts her head and grins up to his profile. “I’m somewhat of an expert at it.”

Stannis groans, lowers his hand from her hair to squeeze her ass.

“Don’t get me worked up, you’ll break me,” he says, craning his neck to kiss her before letting his head drop back to the bed. “But truthfully, I _want_ to touch you. I want to be the one to make you come, though I greatly appreciated the assist earlier,” he adds dryly.

Sansa laughs.

“Male ego, hmm?”

He chuckles, a deep rumbling grumbling sound from his chest.

“Something like that, I suppose. Though maybe it’s more of an _old_ male’s ego. I want to make sure I can keep up.”

“Oh, you more than kept up,” she says, lifting her head again to kiss his chest. “Believe me, you were absolutely wonderful,” she says, propping herself up on an elbow to take in the disbelieving expression she knows is already on his face.

“If I was it was because of you,” he says, the hand in her hair moving so he can brush a knuckle down the curve of her jaw. “A beautiful woman like you is more than a little inspiring. You could launch a thousand ships, Sansa. Helen be damned.”

It’s overtly romantic and whimsical, especially for Stannis, and Sansa can’t help but bite her lip as she smiles down at the steadfast gaze of him. Out of the corner of her eye she sees the bouquet of irises, miraculously intact after their roll in the hay, still cast aside on the pillow.

“Come on,” she says, reaching over his body to grab them. “I want to put these pretty things in water.”

“I want to put these pretty things in my mouth,” he says against the sway of her breasts in his face, and Sansa gasps and hums when he cups one and does as he pleases.

“Down, boy,” she murmurs once he’s suckled her and set her free, though she has half a mind to see just where that kind of attention can lead to.

“Boy?” he says incredulously, sitting up once she stands to shrug into her bathrobe. “First I’m Grumpy Cat and now I’m _boy_?”

Sansa laughs, watches the lean length of him as he swings his legs over the edge of the bed to put his boxer briefs back on. 

“There’s nothing boyish about you,” she says once he stands and steps into her, effectively pinning her to the wall with the loom of his height and the blue of his gaze. “You are _all_ man.”

“I’d like to be _your_ man,” he says quietly, pinching the lapel of her robe between thumb and finger, sliding the touch from shoulder to navel and back again, eyes downcast until he lifts them to her. “If you’d have me.”

Sansa smiles, surrenders and leans back against the wall, head against it as she gazes up at him. Lifts her arms and wraps them around his shoulders when he drops his touch to her hip and tugs her into him. It’s such a classy way to ask to be boyfriend-girlfriend, far more mature than any other man has ever put forth the question, even here where he’s standing in his underwear and she doesn’t even have any on.

“Of course you’re my man,” she says against his mouth before she kisses him, and then a grin as she draws back to regard him, and the look on his face is one of unmitigated joy mingled with amused suspicion, because he knows her pretty well by now and probably knows what’s coming. “And you butter believe it.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Picset](http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/176785994798/bowled-over-by-jillypups-chapter)

 

Sansa is still all buzzy and lightheaded when she traipses out of her bedroom with flowers in hand, and not only because of the incredible sex she just had, or the fact that Stannis is still in her room, in his _boxers_ no less _,_ but also because of what he just asked her.

 _I’d like to be_ your _man,_ he said.

It was all she could do not to say _um, DUH_ or high five him and squeal.

Her kitchen is dark save for the light under her oven hood, and that coupled with the occasional flicker and flare of lightning outside her above-sink window gives the shadowed room a deep, blue-screen-blue sort of feel, though it is no less inviting for the coolness of it. Her white fridge glows like a heron on midnight water, her little red teakettle is a metallic poppy blossom on the black of her stovetop, and aside from the thunder that is rolling away into the distance, it’s a quiet little den of shiny appliances, dried herbs and spices and, now, a lovely bouquet of white bearded irises.

She takes a blue and white porcelain vase from the open shelf china cabinet in the far corner, fills it with water, tries to focus on arranging flowers and finds it impossible. Wiping the smile off her face, however soft and gauzy a thing it might be, however linen-in-the-breeze light it might be, also proves to be impossible. Sansa can still feel him inside her, can still see him above her in the warm panting glow of her bedroom that is such a contrast to the cool peace here.

“Crap,” she mutters under her breath when she sets the filled vase down on the counter by her mise-en-place.

Chopped shallots, garlic and parsley in ramekins, two cups of warming wine in a pyrex measuring cup, a bay leaf on the edge of a wooden chopping board with a loaf of bread under a cloth napkin. Sansa scolds herself for leaving the first three ingredients out of the fridge for so long, pinches the three ramekins together in one hand and lifts them to stick them back in the refrigerator. They’ve definitely worked up an appetite tonight and she wants to start dinner soon, but the chef in her can’t abide by letting the quality of food dip even a notch.

She hums a Fleetwood Mac song as she pulls out the cold bottle of sauvignon blanc, tosses her hair back over her shoulder when she stands and closes the fridge door, jumps and gasps with a hand to her heart to see a silent Stannis there on the other side of the counter. Laughs a moment at her skittishness, and it must come across as slightly manic because he frowns.

“Are you all right?”

“You startled me, that’s all. I’m not used to having people in my house this late.”

“Ah.”

And now _she_ frowns when she realizes he’s fully dressed, from shirt right down to his shoes and then, oh god, she sees his car keys in his hand. It’s all a far cry from the loose relaxed man lounging in his skivvies in her room. Sansa sets the bottle of wine on the counter next to her flowers and looks up at him. He asked to be mine, she thinks as she instantly starts to panic. He was supposed to be different, and now he’s bailing after sex?

“What’s um, what’s going on?” she says, lightly as she can while she nods towards him with her chin, and she hugs herself for support and because she’s only in her bathrobe and suddenly feels like an idiot.

Stannis’s frown deepens, and he takes a step towards her, resting the palms of his loose fists on the edge of her blue Formica counter, his car keys jangling against it to add insult to injury. She’s here on the inner side of it, trying not to fidget from the chittery way she’s feeling, unsettled and shaken up like some sort of tennis ball that was just slammed from the heavenly side of the court to the nightmare.

“I’m just getting my bag from my car. I was, ah, a little preoccupied when I first got here to remember it,” he says, not shyly but with a downcast glance and that uptick smile of amusement. “But now that you’re dressed more comfortably, I’d like to do the same.”

Sansa lets loose of a breath she didn’t know she was holding, nods and smiles, drops her arms to her side and feels like a paranoid fool. Bridget Jones’ Diary is one of her favorite movies, and one scene comes to mind right now, except if this were _her_ movie, the word _DUUUMBASS_ would stretch across the screen instead of _FUUUUCK._ Of _course_ he’s getting an overnight bag from the car. There’s nothing about him that screams or says or even whispers that he’s the kind of guy to crash overnight in his clothes.

“Of course you are,” she says with a smile and a shake of her head. “Of course, how silly of me.”

“Are you sure you’re all right?”

“I um, I think I’m still a little jelly-legged from earlier, that’s all,” she says, smiling a bit breathlessly to cover up her nerves.

Another look of amusement as he pushes off the counter.

“You and I both, beautiful. I’ll be right back.”

She watches the retreat of him as he heads for the front door, closes her eyes and smacks her palm against her forehead when she hears the screen door slap shut.

“What is _wrong_ with you _,_ ” she mutters as she retrieves two wine glasses and a bottle opener. “You _know_ he likes you,” she says, gritting her teeth as she yanks the cork out.

And she _does,_ she knows it with far more conviction and assurance that she has in nearly all her past relationships, except maybe for Gendry, who was an absolute adoring little puppy with a crush until they finally got together and realized they had zero chemistry. That’s certainly not a problem she has to worry about with Stannis, something that is instantly reconfirmed once he returns and changes into loose jersey pajama pants and a black A-shirt. Lean and trim, a barefoot pad across the kitchen when he comes to stand by her side, hand to her back, goosebumps to all of her at the touch. Enough chemistry to win the Nobel prize, here where she can catch his scent, here where that hand of his slides down the slope of her ass, here where there is a very real part of her that wants to strip naked all over again.

“Here,” she says, lifting his glass towards him. Here, where it’s just you and me, she thinks.

“Thank you.”

“What should we toast to?”

He pauses, considers the question with that serious pluck to his mouth as he _hmmms._ A storm-dark look to her that lifts from floor to her face.

“Your legs.”

Sansa rolls her eyes, stuck somewhere between unaccustomed to and adjusting to constant compliments from someone who has such trouble accepting them. Then she grins and snaps her fingers with her free hand.

“Condoms,” she says with a firm nod.

Stannis can’t help but laugh.

“I _will_ drink to that, as a matter of fact.”

Sansa taps her glass against his with a merry little chinkle of sound, and she smiles at him over the rim as they take their first sips.

“All right,” he says with a squinted glance around the darkened kitchen. “Since we took care of the most pressing business at hand earlier,” he says dryly, “I wondered if you’d show me around your place. Fair’s fair.”

“Fair’s fair,” she says, setting down her glass to tuck her robe more firmly into place under the sash around her waist, a smile up to him there where he’s gazing at her, all steadfast and true and, she can tell, burning now, much brighter than he ever did before.  “Away we go.”

Her house is little, could nestle itself several times over on _Storm’s End,_ but it’s still a source of pride and comfort, considering she bought it herself. It’s nowhere near as austere as Stannis’s own living space but it flirts along the same principle; she dumped the frills and fancies of adolescence back in high school, prefers now to state herself in the clear terms of This Is Who I Am.

There’s the living room comprised of hardwood floors, estate sale rugs, and two squashy sofas with brightly colored pillows she re-covered herself, built in bookshelves filled to the brim with fiction and cookbooks, her prized 1998 edition of _Larousse Gastronomique_ as much on display as her Bronte and Austen. There’s her half-guestroom, half-office with a desk and a futon covered with the quilt she inherited from her grandmother, in addition to that prized china cabinet she has in the kitchen. Throughout the space are a few watercolors her brother Bran painted, a few vintage posters in black frames, a cluster of family photographs on the mantle.

He is an observant and curious tourist in her space, one hand in the pocket of his pajama pants, the other holding his glass of wine, shows interest in those things that genuinely interest him, like that old cookbook and a few of Bran’s paintings, but only one thing truly stops him in his tracks once they find themselves standing in Sansa’s kinda-sorta office.

“What’s this?” he says, leaving her side to approach a bookcase, hand slipping free from his pocket so he can pick up a small frame from one of the upper shelves.

It’s been a while since Sansa paid a lot of attention to her tchotchkes so she’s frowning with bemusement as she follows him, her cheek a press to his shoulder when she arrives at his side and looks at what he’s got. And then she hums her recognition, half smiles in a faraway sort of way as she remembers. Funny, how old sorrow and nostalgia can mingle to make an almost sweet feeling.

“Well,” she says softly, “that’s me.”

“I can tell,” he says with a light scoff. “I could spot you in a riot, let alone in a photo just of you. What’s the story behind it?”

It’s a picture of her taken from behind and several feet away, a perfect portrait or sadness and solitude. She’s sitting on the riverbank in her grandparents’ backyard, copper hair toyed with by the breeze, the early summer grass brightly verdant under a ripe Missouri sun, a strict and cruel contradiction to the grey sky sort of day it felt like and should have been.

“That was the day we buried my grandfather,” she says. “My dad took that picture. I had to take a few days off from school to fly out and be there.  It was a- part of me wishes I hadn’t gone. Lots of melodramatics and antics, family fights and screaming and crying. It was horrible, but--”

“But you’re loyal, so you went regardless.”

Quiet observation, not a question, because he’s starting to know her. That feeling is a strange and lovely one, and she smiles, turns her face into his arm where her cheek is still resting, and without quite knowing why, or perhaps knowing full well, she kisses the bare of his skin.

He stills, not that he was in motion at the moment though he usually so often is, even when the action requires no movement save the turning of those gears that are in constant motion in his mind. Turns after a moment to place his mouth on the crown of her head. No kiss, just the press. No kiss, just the inhale through his nose. No kiss, just the reminder, maybe, that he is here.

“There _was_ something wrong, wasn’t there?” he gruffs out against her hair. “Earlier, when I was going to my car for my things.”

Sansa winces and keeps her eyes closed, hears him set the photo back on the shelf and his wine glass as well, feels him carefully turn towards her with two hands on her shoulders to square her to him, and he’s frowning at her as always when she finally opens her eyes and lifts her gaze to him.

She is beginning to decipher his frowns; lord knows there are several. Frown of confusion, indignation, disgust when he musters enough of it for something he deems unworthy even of that. Frown of suspicion, scrutiny, disbelief. Frown of concentration, frown of pent up tension and its unavoidable release.

This frown, though, is one of concern, and it makes Sansa smile even though she’s more than a little embarrassed. Rain drums overhead, filling her brief silence.

“Nothing wrong, per say, I just, you know,” she finally says, stalling a moment before she rolls her eyes and sighs. “I thought you were leaving.”

Eyebrows shoot up as he takes a step back, hands still on her shoulders.

“Leaving? You thought _I_ was leaving _you_ ,” he says.

“You were in your clothes,” she says lamely.

“So I wouldn’t run out half naked in your neighborhood. _And_ in the rain, might I add.”

“Well, _I_ don’t know,” she says defensively, sniffing as she glances away from him. It feels stupid now but then it felt so real. “That’s what guys do sometimes. Well, a lot of the time.”

Stannis hums, a deep sound like a grouchy and disgruntled beast, some bur-covered bear disturbed during his forage. And then he cups her face in his hands like she is precious water in the last spring on earth, looks at her eyes, her mouth, her eyes once more, gives the slightest shake of his head.

“I will readily admit, there are several things that separate me from a lot of men. I spent my formative years chasing law and economics degrees instead of ‘skirts,’ as Robert would say. Women were never a priority, not even when I found myself married with a child on the way. Romance is largely lost on me, save what I can research on the internet. All my life I’ve only known numbers, facts, I’ve only known justice and the expectations this world determines for us. But if I’ve learned anything from my more recent years in journalism, it’s to not let go of a good thing once you find it. A lead, a clue, a hunch, no matter what, you do not walk away from it.”

“Which one am I?” she murmurs, reaching up to lightly clasp his forearms.

“You are extraordinary. Intelligent and beautiful and self-possessed. Creative, too, a trait that has evaded me my entire life until lately.”

She feels like a windless sail suddenly gusting with some far away and exotic gale full of spice and musk, the color of saffron and the heat of cinnamon.

“How can you think you’re not romantic?” Voice barely above a whisper.

He huffs and rolls his eyes, hands slipping down to her shoulders. “It’s as if you aren’t listening to me. It’s not romantic if it’s—”

“Yeah, yeah, facts,” she interrupts, pushing his hands off her so she can wrap her arms around his shoulders and drag him down to kiss her.

The push and slide of tongues and the increasing familiarity that has slowly robbed him of hesitation as he lets his hands roam around her. She’s starting to catch on to the rhythm of him, how he doesn’t kiss to linger or savor, even, but kisses to consume, kisses to scratch an itch and answer a question. And she’s starting to understand his intensity and unswerving resolution and how that translates when they are together. She’s also pretty sure she’s in deep, with this man, and she’s also starting to realize that he’s right down here with her.

“You give a fascinating home tour, Ms. Stark,” he says quietly once they part, Sansa’s hands at the nape of his neck, his on her hips. A soft peck to her mouth, warm gaze to her eyes. “Very thorough.”

“Well, I do try,” she says with a happy humming sigh, a little cat’s purr roll of thunder of her very own as she kisses him back, closed mouth but still heated up.

But then it dawns on her that between the sex and wine and conversation, he’s already been here over two hours. The chef in her stirs from dormancy, pushes aside the vixen to lift her head and sniff the air. She draws back from him, sets him loose with the unwind of her arms around him, though his hands never leave her hips.

“Oh my god, I still haven’t made us dinner. It’s not really a meal I can save for later on this week.”

“What are we having?”

“Moules in white wine, French bread, and a salad. We’ll be in the dining room, though I wanted to eat outside in the backyard. It would have been nice if it hadn’t started raining, the real treasure of this place is out there.”

“Oh? What treasure is this?”

“The garden,” she says with a smile as she commandeers his wine and takes a few sips. “I use every bit of it in my menus. Maybe tomorrow morning we can check it out, if the rain lets up by then,” she says as she leads him out in the hall and back to the kitchen.

“If I let you out of bed,” he says matter-of-factly behind her before he reaches around her and deftly steals back his glass.

“Cheeky,” she murmurs with a glance over her shoulder.

He drops his eyes to her rear and the sway of hips that she would never dare admit is a _bit_ more exaggerated than her normal walk provides.

“Indeed.”

“You know,” she says, spinning on her heels to stop him in his tracks with a wagging finger. “For someone who constantly self-deprecates due to age, you sure don’t hold back with the randy commentary. ‘Boy,’ indeed.”

“What can I say,” he says with his uptick smile, head inclined as he comes to a halt in front of her. “The floodgates have been breached.”

Sansa decides to take that as another compliment. And that compliment is all but confirmed after she turns back towards the counter for her own wine and he steps in close enough to press his half-erection against her, leans in to set his glass on the counter beside hers and sweeps her hair away from her neck to kiss her.

“Aren’t you hungry?” she murmurs, tilting her head to the side to give him more room.

“Ravenous,” he whispers roughly against her skin. “I thought that was clear.”

High gasping breaths in the back of her throat.

“Crystal.”

She whimpers when he slides his right hand down her chest and into her bathrobe, pushes her body back against him when he fingers and pinches her left nipple, squeezes and kneads her breast, only to abandon it for the other. Stannis’s unoccupied hand reaches around to untie her sash and then tug the robe off her shoulder, and now he’s hard as a rock, and Sansa can’t help but rise up on her toes like a dancer, though the only moves she knows at the moment involve far less clothing and far more moaning.

Wordlessly his hands leave her, and she’s left gasping and empty for a moment until he turns her around and grabs her waist, grunts and hoists her up on the counter, her robe half off and gathered in the crooks of her bent elbows. Instantly she spreads her legs to beckon him and he heeds her like the pull of two magnets, hands sliding under the useless robe to find more skin, mouth following suit as he nips and sucks on her throat before righting his head to kiss her.

Ravenous is the word he used and its accuracy is almost numbing if it weren’t so tantalizing, and the roughening way he comes at her is beginning to put a little bite to her own hunger. Once she frees her arms from her robe she straightens her spine to reach as much of his back as she can, hands moving around the trunk of him so that she can dig her nails into him and drag them from shoulder blade to base of his spine.

“Jesus _Christ,_ ” he growls, back arching under the administration, though it does nothing to waver his course of action.

Stannis places a hand at the center of her back and she’s half-fearful, half-excited at the notion that he’s going to pay her back for that, but instead of scratch her he simply pushes with his other hand until she’s arched backwards, head tossed back while he sucks one breast into his mouth and cups and kneads and squeezes the other. She reaches back and grabs the edge of the counter behind her to brace herself and hold herself in place for this lovely torture, and the throb between her legs is almost enough to make her cry, it is so exquisitely and tightly bound. No matter that they had sex already tonight. It wasn’t enough, it will never be enough, she will be this starved for more until the sun turns to dust.

“Is this it?” he asks her collarbone between licks and kisses, and she’s about to ask if he means that this is it, this is all they’ll do for forever, and she’s about to say she hopes so when one of his hands buries itself between her thighs. “Is this what you do? Is this what you want?”

“Yes,” she pants out like an animal, all base need that has intensified so far beyond spineless want that it makes her feel like another creature altogether. “Higher,” she adds when his touch slips away, and then it returns with rabid enthusiasm.

Stannis is an obedient student, so eager to learn her and master the touch that will send her up and over, and he is clearly as lost in the lesson as she is, because when the front door bangs open, he jumps just as much as she does, though when Sansa squeals out in surprise and shock, Stannis opts for a long string of obscenities. The door slams shut.

“Who the hell’s there,” he barks over his shoulder before turning back to Sansa with a shake of his head in bewilderment.

“Grumpy Cat, I knew you’d still be here!” Arya shouts. “It’s Pod and me! Where are you two horndogs at?”

They both scramble with her robe, Sansa hastily tying it in place while he rearranges it around her shoulders, and just as he helps her down off the counter, Arya comes bouncing into the kitchen with Podrick in tow.

She’s dressed up as much as Arya ever gets dressed up, an extra smoky eye and a pair of booties with her customary torn skinny jeans, an actual bra under her gauzy black blouse. Podrick is slightly more sedate in jeans and a light sweater.

“Guess what, you two? We’re getting _married,_ ” she shrieks, sticking her left hand straight up in the air, knuckles facing them so they can see the winkle of a diamond there on her ring finger.

“Oh my god, Arya, I’m so happy for you,” Sansa says, momentarily distracted by the knowledge that her future brother-in-law has been plotting this for weeks.

Why it had to be tonight of all nights, though, she’ll never know.

“Arya, hang on babe, I think we’re uh, I think we just interrupted something,” Podrick says, eyeing the way Sansa is clutching her robe shut, the way Stannis looks like a man who nearly jumped off a cliff only to be dragged away from the edge.

“Oh screw that, I can tell they already boned. Just look at them,” she says over her shoulder before turning back to beam maniacally at them. “Get dressed and come get in the Uber, we’re going out to celebrate our _WEDDING!”_

Sansa bites her lip and glances to Stannis, who is looking terrified in a subdued, jaw-clenched Stannis sort of way. She knows _exactly_ how he feels. She can still feel the way he rubbed her with his fingers, and now they have to go out? It's madness to her. She turns back to her sister.

“Arya, I am _so_ happy for you and I would _love_ to celebrate, but can’t it wait until—”

“No way, man, come on! I just got _engaged_ for fuck’s sake. Me! Me of all people,” she says, eyes wide as she looks at first Sansa and then Stannis with wonder and disbelief at her own upcoming nuptials. But the look softens when she turns to beam at Podrick, and Sansa can't ignore how stupidly adorable they two of them are. “Out of the world fucking unbelievable, but there it is. I love him awful.”

“I love you wonderful,” Pod replies with a smile so disarming he could bring about world peace, sidling up to her to sling an arm around her waist.

“Come _on_ you two sticks in the mud,” Arya wheedles as she puts her hands together in a prayer and hunches forward toward them. “Whatever you two had planned tonight, we’ll have way more fun out on the town.”

Stannis sighs as he pinches the bridge of his nose with his eyes closed.

“Doubtful.”

“So it’s settled!” Arya hops out of Podrick’s loose embrace to tackle Sansa, and she links her arm with her big sister’s and starts to drag her towards her bedroom. “Come on, sis, let’s find you something really slutty to wear.”

“Well,” Podrick says conversationally to Stannis from behind them. “They say there’s a silver lining to every cloud, right?”


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> long ass chapter, sorry!
> 
>  
> 
> [Picset](http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/177040047278/bowled-over-by-jillypups-chapter)

“To be clear,” Stannis murmurs in her ear, low as he can and still be heard over the music, “that outfit is nowhere near what I would call ‘slutty’.”

“Oh?”

Sansa looks down at the plunging neckline of her lacy LBD. It’s a deep V that ends between her breasts, leaving little to the imagination due to its short length. To top it off, it is, for the most part, backless. But so was that pricy gold dress she wore to his party; she couldn’t resist the urge to do a little flaunting.

“Well it’s certainly the raciest thing in my closet,” she says of the dress Margaery insisted she borrow for New Year’s Eve and that she should probably return one of these days.

They’re sitting in a low-backed horseshoe booth in some new bar off Grantiot Avenue downtown, view of the street visible thanks to the wall of paned windows at the front of the place. Stannis has his arms stretched out along the back of the sofa, effectively opening up a place for Sansa to sit by his side, her body a light lean against the trunk of his body as they both people watch.

Outside, the wet street is streaked and puddled with the reflection of multicolored neon lights along the avenue, and the rain still coming down beads the window like clear pearls. It all adds a dark sultry mood to the bar and the atmosphere, to the intense way Stannis regards her, like he could take a bite out of her even though he’s already feasted on her tonight. Thank god Arya and Pod are ordering drinks at the bar.

“Nothing could look ‘slutty’ on you,” he says, lifting a hand to let his fingertips drift across her shoulder blades, the closest thing to PDA he’s gotten so far. “Besides, I dislike that word. It’s a crass way to say provocative.”

“So, is the dress provocative?” Arched brow and mock stern expression.

Stannis exhales a breath of amusement. “Nice try. How about I tell you the dress is lovely to look at, but not as lovely as it is to look at you wearing it.”

It’s a Stannis way of telling her she’s not letting the clothes wear her, and Sansa happily contents herself with the compliment, especially considering how wildly overdressed she is compared to everyone here, even Stannis. He’s back in his jeans and Henley from earlier that evening, though he wears them as austerely as one of his suits, is on par more with Podrick and even Arya than Sansa. It’s somewhat of a pleasant change from how he’s normally dressed during the work week while she’s sweating in her truck wearing gym shorts and stained t-shirts.

“Well, thank you,” she says archly, twisting in her seat to look at him.  “I suppose that’s why you had me walk ahead of you when we walked inside?”

The twitch of his mouth as he slides a glance to her. “You know what they say: Location, location, location.”

Sansa laughs. While she’s never been a fan of getting cat-called, unlike Margaery and a pre-Jon Jeyne, she has to admit there’s something decadently delightful whenever she catches him checking her out. Maybe it’s because it’s less leering than it is so evidently appreciative. He makes her feel like artwork, an auburn Mona Lisa, something prized to stand in front of and bathe in its wonder. As if he can read her thoughts, Sansa catches the fleeting drop of his gaze to snag a glimpse of cleavage.

Maybe she won’t be returning this dress to Margaery after all.

“I wish we were still at your house,” Stannis says under his breath, and he drops the graze of his fingers from her shoulder down the length of her arm, sending up a riot of gooseflesh.

It’s the smallest of touches but she’s still wired from their interrupted tryst in the kitchen, and it makes Sansa close her eyes and tilt her head towards him.

“Me, too.”

 “I wish I still had you on that counter wearing that damnable robe with my hand on—” he stops, making her open her eyes. Something clearly snagged his attention. “Incoming,” he mutters, disappointment weighting down his voice.

Sansa turns towards the crowd in time to see her sister and future brother-in-law heading towards them with everyone’s drinks. They’re both so plainly pleased as punch, flushed and ruddy-cheeked Podrick and eyes-bright Arya, who does a little hippy-hippy-shake once she’s free from the throng at the bar and can close the distance to the booth with more ease. Stannis clears his throat and straightens perceptibly in his seat, hackles not quite raised though loins are clearly girded.  

“All right, so we have the old-fashioned for you, which, I gotta admit, I couldn’t name better myself, considering,” Arya says as she slides the drink across the table towards Stannis, who snorts by way of response, and she grins and raises her drink before taking a swig.

Arya slides into the booth next to Sansa, the two girls flanked by, Sansa realizes with a thrill, their men, who are both classic examples of people who are so profoundly different and yet somehow similar due to that just goodness that resides within them.

“That’s what you had on _Storm’s End_ the night of your party,” Sansa says with a smile at the memory of how he almost touched her.

“Same goes to you,” Stannis says when Podrick carefully sets Sansa’s gimlet down, careful not to spill any from the frosted martini glass.

“Two adorable sticks in the mud,” Arya says cheerfully as she gives Pod’s thigh a squeeze as he settles in beside her.

“Says the girl who has started the day with a bowl of Apple Jacks for the past 20 years,” Sansa says dryly, lifting her cocktail slowly with two hands to take a sip. “So, you told us how he proposed, but have you guys put any thought to wedding details?”

“Well we’re not serving Apple Jacks,” Podrick says, earning a second snort out of Stannis, though this time he’s clearly amused. “Much to Arya’s chagrin.”

“Har har har,” Arya says with a roll of her eyes. “We really haven’t figured out anything except I really want it to happen on October 4th.”

Sansa frowns, missing the significance.

“What, was that when you first met? First date, something like that?”

Arya grins.

“So whenever people ask ‘hey, when are you guys getting married?’ I can say ‘ten four, little buddy,’” she says, head thrown back as she laughs at her own joke. “Get it? Like a truck driver on a CB radio? Ten four, little buddy!”

Stannis huffs out a laugh with the shake of his head, hides that uptick smile by taking a swallow of bourbon, not that Arya would even pick up on it. Something about that makes Sansa happy; she knows how to read and decipher him where others don’t. Part of her thinks maybe she should strive to get others to understand him better, but the other, larger part thinks that if Stannis wanted to be more understood he’d figure out a way to do that himself. She’ll have him just as he is, thank you very much.

While her little sister may not register when Stannis smiles she evidently can still tell he is amused, and Sansa can tell _that_ by the perked up way she glances at him.

Though Arya said there was only one aspect of the wedding planning she’d taken care of, it has still clearly been on her mind in the short time since Pod got down on one knee in the middle of miniature golf after Arya hit a hole in one. She’s told their parents and brothers and Jon, her best friend Wylla as well as Margaery, the latter having already texted Arya about two dozen links to wedding gown sites.

“But I don’t think I wanna wear some big dumb puffy dress,” Arya says with the shrug of a shoulder. “Or to do it in a church or anything. I don’t care about how we do it, just that we do it. Olive you so much, baby,” she purrs before kissing a smiling Podrick on the cheek.

“We’re thinking of a drive-thru chapel,” he says after a sip of his drink. “Then come back and throw a party and let everyone know the deed is done.”

The very idea pains Sansa to her core, and she betrays her dismay with a hand pressed to her chest.

“You don’t even want to get out of the _car_? It’s the two of you professing your lifelong devotion to each other.”

Podrick shrugs, and then beams at Arya.

“I just want to be married to her. I knew it when I met her and I’ve already waited a couple of years.”

She thinks of tealights and hurricane vases, garlands of flowers hanging in weeping willows, an outdoor reception that lasts until midnight all lit up with fairy lights, floating candles in a fountain, all the type of stuff that Arya would call basic-bitch-Pinterest crap that delight her to the core. In fact, the idea of Arya sailing around the room in a ‘big dumb puffy dress’ is no more believable than pigs flying. And the idea of sweet hang-by-the-sidelines Podrick making toasts and flinging garters, that’s almost enough to make her snort out a laugh of her own.

“Well, I guess you two are perfect for each other. Mom’s going to kill you, though.”

“Eh, that’s what she has you for,” Arya says with a careless wave in Sansa’s direction. “You’ve been dying to get married since you were in kindergarten. Hey, look, the appetizers are here,” she says, sitting up straight when a server with a huge tray approaches.

Not that Sansa cares. She _was_ hungry, but not anymore. Instead of hunger, now she’s filled with an acute pang of sharp, almost paralytic embarrassment when Sansa sees, from the corner of her eye, Stannis stiffen at the mention of weddings. Specifically, Sansa’s. Suddenly he’s the last person she thinks she can look at even though he’s right here next to her, the warmth from his body an emanation she can feel soak into her skin through to the flimsy froth of her dress.

“Steffon!” Stannis suddenly exclaims with a cracked voice that he has to remedy by clearing his throat before he goes on to recover. “Steffon, I didn’t know you worked here,” he says to the server in a more even tone.

He’s a college aged guy with brown hair and eyes, and he keeps glancing at Stannis as he unloads his tray.

“Mr. Baratheon, hello,” Steffon says, eyes wide when he registers the type and age of company Mr. Baratheon is currently keeping. “I didn’t see you come in.”

Steffon’s gaze falls on Sansa and she meets it with a polite albeit likely slightly bemused look of her own, though that bemusement doesn’t stop her from registering the frank appraisal he’s giving her. Stannis moves his hand from his cocktail to rest it on Sansa’s knee with a light squeeze. His fingers are cold from the glass and that coupled with the touch from Mr. No PDA makes Sansa inhale sharply through her nose.

“We only just arrived. Steffon, this is my significant other, Sansa,” – here Arya elbows Sansa so hard in the ribs that she gasps – “her sister Arya, and Podrick, Arya’s fiancé. We are currently celebrating their engagement, which can be the only excuse for this overabundance of food,” he says with the raised eyebrows and slightly flared nostrils of incredulous disapproval as he shifts his gaze from the server to the bounty being unloaded before them.

It _is_ an overabundance, though, so Sansa really can’t quite blame Stannis. There’s a cheese board _and_ a charcuterie board, an artichoke and egg dish along with a take on ratatouille and a huge fattoush salad.

“Keep your shirt on, I’m footing the bill tonight. Podrick broke the bank getting me _this,_ ” Arya says, waggling her ring finger in front of Steffon.

“Well congrats, you two,” Steffon says amiably, nodding his approval at Arya’s ring. “Oh, and chef wanted me to let you know that the lamb will be out in just a few minutes.”

“Jesus, Arya,” Sansa murmurs. “You feeding an army?”

Stannis sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose.

“How’s my old man doing? Still keeping the  _Storm’s End_  uh, well,” Steffon grins, “shipshape?”

“Davos is doing excellent work, as always. Steffon is my first officer’s son,” Stannis says with a lingering glance to Sansa, and she’s relieved to see there’s no guarded wariness after Arya’s blurt-out.

“Nice to meet you, Steffon,” Sansa says with a more relaxed smile, her hand coming to rest atop Stannis’s here where it’s still on her knee.

“You know, I talked to him the other day, and I don’t mean to try and stick my foot in the door like a total loser,” Steffon says once his tray is empty and he can lower it to his side. “But he said you threw a pretty impressive party the other day.”

Stannis shifts in his seat, hip a bump against Sansa’s as he sits up a little straighter, taking a deep sip of his cocktail before he nods.

“It was a modest affair.”

“It was absolutely spectacular,” Sansa says with a mock glare Stannis’s way before she smiles back to Steffon.

“Even though _we_ weren’t invited,” Arya mutters. “Then it would have been off the _hook_.”

“One fewer person to fling herself into the harbor,” Stannis rallies.

To her credit, Arya snickers.

“Touché, Mr. G.C.”

“Uh, well,” a confused and slightly uncomfortable-looking Steffon says. “He told me since you only had a couple of weeks to prepare for that particular function that I shouldn’t bother you about it, but I just wanted to say for the future, anytime during summer vacation, I can always help out your waitstaff. I only take one or two accelerated classes and could always use the extra cash. I mean, income,” he self-corrects hastily.

Another Arya-elbow to the ribs, in the same sore spot, so hard it makes Sansa twist in her seat to glare at her little sister, who is staring at her wide eyed and making ill-concealed little head bobs towards Stannis.

 _Back off,_ Sansa mouths before tending to her cocktail. Her sister’s bouts of immature bravado are starting to embarrass the hell out of her. Though Stannis’s hand _is_ still on her knee, so there's that.

“Of course, Steffon. I’ll be sure to do so in future. Davos will give me your contact information.”

Steffon is a bundle of profuse thank-yous as he backs away from the table, and they are left to contend with the mountain of food before them. Podrick and Arya dig into the lamb with gusto once it arrives, though Sansa sticks to the cheese and ratatouille, with Stannis showing mild interest in the salad and, hesitantly, one of the lamb lollies Podrick offers before the dish is utterly demolished. Two more rounds of drinks come and go, though they are all so full that they don’t do much by way of a buzz, at least for Sansa, though they wind up warranting a trip to the ladies’ room that Arya joins her for.

“Dude, did you _see_ that? Or hear it, whatever,” Arya says from the next-door stall as they both empty their bladders.

“You being a total jackass?”

“Nah, I never notice that anymore. I’m talking about what that waiter guy said.”

“He said lots of stuff.”

Two flushes and the metal clang as the stall doors open in practical unison. Sansa glares at Arya via the mirror as the two sisters wash their hands.

“What he _said_ was that Stannis only had two weeks to plan that stupid _spectacular_ party of his,” Arya says, water droplets spraying as she lifts her wet hands to put air quotes around ‘spectacular.’

“So? He’s clearly capable of it. I mean, I should have taken photos, Arya, it was, as you say, off the hook.”

“No, dude, he said that _particular_ party. The one he invited _you_ to. Two weeks before the party,” she says, giving her reflection a once over before taking Sansa by the arm and dragging her to the bathroom door.

“I- no, that’s not, I mean, why would he,” she falters as she’s pulled out of the ladies’ room into the hall. “Why would take that risk? What if it didn’t work?”

“He probably knew he could pull it off and so rolled the dice. I think it’s very clear that _that_ man knows how to get shit done.”

Sansa thinks of the push and the thrust of him, the lick of him and the dogged determination to be the one in the bedroom who gets her off. She suppresses a shiver and shrugs to cover up the sudden rush of recent memory, so recent she can practically still feel the fullness of him inside her.

“Yeah, I guess. I just—”

“Hey, baby!” Arya says just as the door to the men’s room swings open to reveal her fiancé. She grins. “Was there a little pee in the Pod?”

He blushes, even though he kisses her all the same. Sansa groans, and they both ignore her.

“Yeah. Plus, uh, no offense San, but Stannis talks a _lot_ about stocks if you so much as make one comment about saving for the future.”

“Speaking of,” Arya says, taking her phone out of her back pocket. “Let me check my balance. I want another one of those fruity cocktails before we go but only if I have enough. I can tell _these_ two are getting ants in the pants to get back home. All that scandalous _knee_ touching. I went to clutch my pearls but I remembered I left them in Podrick’s ass.”

“Arya!” Sansa gasps, staring in horror at Pod, who takes this opportunity to sigh and pinch the bridge of _his_ nose. He’s had those in him all night?

“Oh come on, I’m kidding. God, remind me not to leave you two with mom for a prolonged period of time, you’ll all turn into church mi- oh, _fuck!_ ” Arya’s jaw hangs open after the expletive as she stares in (finally) mute horror at her phone.

“What’s wrong, baby?” Podrick says, coming to look over Arya’s shoulder.

“Maybe she realized she left her pearls up her _own_ ass,” Sansa mutters mulishly, still mortified and offended at the unbidden mental her sister gave her.

“My account,” Arya whispers. “My account is completely overdrawn,” she says with a whimper, pulling the screen down to see if a refresh will magically deposit a few hundred bucks.

“What happened? You had money in there yesterday,” Podrick says with a frown, though instead of a flare of temper he just rubs her shoulders.

“I’m checking,” Arya says, shoulders slumping less under his administrations and more under the weight of her oversight. “Goddammit, I forgot about the fucking phone bill _and_ the electric.”

There is a brief, slightly heated conversation about when specific bills are due each month.

“Okay, listen,” Arya says, slipping her phone back in her jeans pocket before raking her hair away from her face. “We’ll just see how much it is. Pod, baby, you’ve got some money, right?”

Her fiancé frowns and shakes his head. “Not until next Friday. I paid the rent today, I’ve got like 50 bucks in there.”

“Well, hey, that’s got to put a dent in it, right?” Arya says as they walk back to the table where Stannis is sitting, sipping his cocktail amidst a sea of takeout boxes, stacked like buildings on a city grid.

“Arya,” Sansa murmurs as they slide back into the booth one at a time. “The food alone was well over a hundred bucks. We each had three cocktails. That’s 12 drinks at, what, 14 bucks a pop?”

“$168,” Stannis tallies quietly.

Arya groans.

“Well, fuck,” she says with a slump and a slouch against the leather booth. “I really screwed the pooch on this one.”

“On what one? A feast? Because I’d say you actually aced it, as far as celebrations go,” Stannis says.

“Listen, Arya, let me take care of it, okay?” Sansa says.

She’ll have to work her ass off and probably work this weekend to make up for a nearly $300 bill, but it’s her sister, here.

“Take care of what?” Stannis asks.

“God, I’m so embarrassed to have to tell _you_ this Daddy Warbucks, but I don’t have the money to pay for tonight. I really wanted to take everyone out, too. Grown up, engaged Arya paying for fancy dinners in a fancy ring,” she says, eyes downcast as she fiddles with the pretty little diamond ring.

“You’ll have to save growing up for another day then,” Stannis says dryly. “The bill already came and went.”

“Went?” Sansa asks with a frown, her hand on his arm. “Stannis, what are you talking about?”

“When the three of you went to the bathroom, it came, so I paid,” he says with a shrug.

All three of their mouths drop open. Stannis looks amused as his gaze flicks from Pod to Arya and lands at last on Sansa. She’s still frowning, still trying to put a finger on _why_ she’s frowning instead of kissing him gratefully.

“Are you _kidding_ me?” Arya says, sitting up with her folded arms on the table’s edge as she leans forward in her seat.

“I’m not, no. Consider it my engagement present to you both.”

Sansa can hear and almost feel the collective sigh of relief between them.

“Oh man, thank you _so_ much,” Podrick says earnestly. “That’s very generous of you.”

“Dude, you are the _man,_ ” Arya says, holding out her arm across the table with her fist aimed towards Stannis. “Stan the Man! Can I call you that?”

“Not if you expect me to answer,” he says, sighing before he reluctantly bumps her fist with his.

The rain is a faint drizzle by the time the Uber drops the two of them off at Sansa’s house, Arya waving with her upper body practically hanging out of the backseat window of the SUV.

“Thanks again, Stannis!” she shouts before they pull away down the street.

“That was an incredibly generous thing to do,” Sansa says as she tosses her keys on the little table by the door once they’re inside.

“You don’t sound too thrilled about it,” he says from behind her. “And you hardly spoke two words on the ride home.”

Sansa stops in the middle of her living room, back to him as she stands there and tries to figure out just what’s niggling at her. Because he’s right, she doesn’t feel thrilled, and she was for the most part silent in the car, using Arya’s not stop chatter as an excuse to keep quiet and stare out the window wondering when and why her mood shifted. And then she remembers a few points of tonight’s conversation, and suddenly the vaguely nauseated feeling she has makes sense, though watching Arya tear into lamb chops like a rabid dog earlier didn’t exactly help either.

“You don’t think we all went to the bathroom to avoid the check, do you?” she asks, turning around on the toes of her stilettos to face him.

He blinks at her, eyebrows raised. Hands in his pockets as he takes two steps towards her, shaking his head as he frowns at her.

“No, I don’t.”

She bites her lip and hugs herself, and his frown of confusion creases deeper into one of concern. Stannis takes another few steps towards her.

“You don’t think I’m after your money, or anything, do you?”

Stannis stops in his tracks, looking at her with an indefinable expression. Pained almost.

“Sansa,” he starts.

There’s a strangeness to his tone, a faint plea of some sort that spikes her temper, the tick of a metronome, a tiny blip on the radar of her mood. If Arya was right and he threw his money around just to impress her, then somehow that must be the way he sees her.

“No, seriously, Stannis, answer me and tell me the truth. Do you think I’m some gold digger, or something?”

She’s been treated like a piece of meat plenty of times in her life, and not just in relationships. The idea of being seen as someone who treats others like walking wallets is almost just as bad.

“My past experiences with women have usually been financially motivated for them, I will be honest. It turned into something that I unfortunately got used to.”

“And that’s why you threw the party, right? To impress me?”

Stannis’s gaze flicks to the side and then the floor before it begrudgingly lifts back to hers.

“I did throw the party to get you to spend time with me, outside of your truck, yes. But then—”

“I can’t believe this.”

Shaking her head in disgust as she walks away from him, Sansa kicks her stilettos off and lets them lay where they land a few feet away. Paces the floor in front of where he stands dumbstruck watching her. Good, let him stare.

“You think I’m some girl looking for a sugar daddy? Is it the whole food truck thing again? You think I’m so _beneath_ others and too poor for my own restaurant or something?”

Which is true, but that’s beside the point.

“Sansa,” he says sharply, the raise of volume in his usually quiet, gruff voice making her stop mid-pace. “Please, for god’s sake, stop. Yes, I threw that party to get you over to my home, I threw it to get your attention, and yes, I did it to impress you. I’m not the first man to go above and beyond to impress a gorgeous woman, and I’m certainly not going to be the last.”

He takes another step towards her, cowboy approaching an unbroken filly, hands out of his pockets as he appeals for surrender.

“Don’t try to butter me up,” she huffs crossly.

“I’m not, I’m just stating facts. Maybe I did hope those things would turn your eye towards me, because I’m not a ladies’ man. I am not my brothers, with their boisterous charm and gift of gab, as they say.”

“I don’t want boisterous charm or gift of gab,” Sansa sniffs. “I don’t want bells and whistles or to have my affection bought and sold to the highest bidder.”

“I know that now. I knew it that afternoon on Belle Isle when you told me that you didn’t want to go out, you just wanted me to cook for you.”

“Oh,” she sighs, arms dropping out of the defensive hug she was giving herself to hang by her sides, but then she squints and points a finger at him. “But you still paid for dinner tonight. I could have floated her the money.”

“I did it for the exact reason I said: it’s my engagement gift to them. No one ever got my ex-wife and me anything when we got engaged. It was the right thing to do, especially if simply paying the bills overdraws her account.”

“Oh,” she repeats, closing the distance between them after he steps into her again.

“I’m not trying to buy your affections, Sansa. Though I have no problem helping here and there. I don’t mind taking care of you, I have the means to do so.”

Toe to toe, almost, his head bowed above hers as he lifts his hand to run a touch along the lace edge of the deep V of her dress.

“You don’t have to take care of me, I can take care of myself,” she murmurs, head inclined as well to watch his fingers as they dip under the lace, his fingernails and the back of his knuckles a tingle-sweeping brush against the skin of her breast.

“Yes, I know. You demonstrated that _very_ well in your bedroom,” the dry graveled humor back in his voice once more.

“Ha,” she exhales, biting her lip as she takes a bit of initiative and starts to slowly ruck his shirt up the length of his back.

“I seem to recall getting a lesson in how to do that a few hours ago, before we were so exuberantly interrupted,” he says, hand sliding out of her dress to pluck at one of the straps, to drag it off the cuff of her shoulder, and he watches keenly as it makes the bodice of her dress sag open.

“I seem to recall that as well. Best lesson ever.”

He laughs at that, a low gusting thing that is no less animalistic for its calm, that is no more arousing than when he pulls her closer with two cups of his hands to her ass. Sansa moans when he kisses her, a deep hum in the back of her throat as he licks into her mouth, rocks her hips forward when she can feel his hard cock against her belly. He breaks the kiss and draws his head back to regard her.

“Teach me how to take care of you. All we need is a counter,” he adds as an afterthought with a shadow of a smile.

Dizzying, the intense way he looks at her when he says that, all hunger and unspent want, all the things bubbling up and over in her right now. Sansa reaches back and takes his hands off her rear and steps backwards away from him, leading him like a lamb to slaughter towards her kitchen. Stannis licks his lower lip as he follows, like he’s trying to get another taste of her, of that kiss, as if he cannot wait for the kisses she’s about to give him in a heartbeat.

“Well,” she says, and she does her best to give him a smile though she’s far more interested in rougher things than mere smiles, at the moment. “As luck would have it, I have just the thing.”

“Yes you do,” he says under his breath, and its like the night at the party but reversed when he looks at her mouth and smiles, a rare thing that anyone could see, though it’s just for her, here, now. “Lead the way, Sansa.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> short but sweet (i hope)!
> 
>  
> 
> [Picset](http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/177348961433/bowled-over-by-jillypups-chapter)

The kitchen is as dark as it was when they first attempted this, darker still now that the lightning and rain have for the most part abated, and it’s a dim little den when Sansa backs up until the counter bumps against her rear. She lets go of his hands and rests hers on the edge behind her, and his own instantly lift to grip her waist as he kisses her roughly, the short walk from the living room having clearly been long enough to work him up.

“Up,” Stannis orders against her mouth. “I want you up, now,” and he helps to lift her as she hoists herself onto the counter.

His hands instantly leave her waist to burrow under the skirt of her dress. Wordlessly he frees her of her panties, short manicured nails a dull drag along her thighs as Sansa shifts to help him in his task. He tosses them next to the vase of irises before returning his hands to her thighs, his thumbs digging into the flesh as he slides them up, up, up, close to the juncture between her thighs where she’s been waiting for his touch for _hours._ It’s enough to make her squirm, to wiggle towards him in mild desperation, and _that_ is enough to make him hum, a low graveled purr of approval. Up, up, up his hands go, past the creases of where her thighs meet her loins, up her flanks as he draws the dress up and over her head.

There’s something jitteringly erotic about being completely naked before a fully clothed man, something enticingly upside down and inside out about being so exposed when he is so covered. Something that flirts with the dominant/submissive kink that she’s never _quite_ been into but is hands down all about right now in this moment. The way he’s looking at her doesn’t do anything to tamp that down, either. Like she’s a piece of meat he is about to devour.

“Now,” he says, voice dark and rough as he drops the dress next to her panties, and he speaks more to her goose-prickled breasts than to her. “Where were we?”

Not that he had to ask, not that she bothers to answer, because he knows full well where they were and he returns to it with relish, pushing her back until she grabs the edge of the counter behind her for support. When he bends down to lick at her Sansa flings her head back with a high gasp in the back off her throat that elicits another hum out of him. Clearly pleased to have earned that reaction out of her, Stannis licks again.

Devour, indeed.

“Higher. Yes, right there, don’t stop. Oh, _god._ ”

Much as he is in control of so much in his life, right now Stannis doesn’t seem to mind taking orders, and even though Sansa knows this is less about listening and more about the eventual conquer over her body, she doesn’t care. Not if it means he’ll do _this_ to her in order to secure that mastery, and judging by how it’s going now, she knows he will come to excel at it.

He alternates between his mouth and his fingers, stares at his action when he rubs her with his thumb, intent as he is on learning and memorizing. It’s almost a startle to her, when she brings her head forward and dazedly looks down at what he’s doing. No one has ever _looked_ at her like that, like she’s some map or work of art down there. But still she keeps her legs spread for him, keeps her guard down for him. No, she thinks when he lowers his mouth back to her, not for him, for _me._ Because after a few more moments he’s succeeded and she’s coming, her body a buck and shiver, her feet scrabbling helplessly for purchase on the two stools he’s standing between, anything to help her through the waves of pleasure that radiate through her, muscles taut and trembling before they turn to jelly.

He straightens and wipes his mouth on his sleeve, unceremonious for such a normally uptight man, but she’s starting to realize that that man doesn’t really exist when Stannis is around her, and that makes her grin, dark and giddy like a wild wolf in the woods. He frowns like he’s suspicious, though the twitch off his mouth tells her it’s a ruse.

“I take it that was sufficient?” The squint of speculation.

“A very good observation,” she says richly.

Sansa tugs him towards her and kisses him, wraps her arms and legs around him so ferociously he grunts and drags her off the counter only to stagger and sink to his knees here on the kitchen floor before he twists and sinks back to sit with her on his lap. When she moves to ruck his shirt up he helps her by reaching back over his shoulders to grab the garment and yank it up and over his head before he chucks it across the room. Sansa cups his face while she kisses him, open mouthed and hot and seeking, hungry, unstoppable, and he runs his hands over whatever he can reach, her back, her hair, her ass, down the length of her thighs to the inside bend of her knees on either side of his hips. There he tucks them in and yanks her harder against him, his jeans a tantalizing rub against the slick of her. And that reminds her.

“Take your pants off.”

“Yes, dear,” he mutters, though first he slides a hand under her thigh and snags another condom from his pocket, and then they both work to shimmy his pants and boxer briefs down far enough for him to roll the condom down the length of his cock. Sansa rises onto her knees, walks on them until she’s right where she needs to be.

He’s staring at her again but this time in unabashed wonderment as he flexes his abs and lowers himself to lie on the floor, hands a sweep up her thighs to her waist, and he applies pressure when she sinks down onto his cock, its head an easy dip inside her thanks to the thorough attention he just paid her.

“Fuck,” he grits out at the slow wet slide inside her. “ _Christ,_ woman.”

Sansa gasps, eyes widening before they shut with her head tipped back as she rocks her hips forward and has the full length of him at last. They’ve already done this but there’s a further degree of intimacy after their argument, however mild it was. Honesty strips a person bare as do confessions, and she feels truly naked now before him, feels thoroughly enjoyed under the roam of his hands as they move up from the firm grip on her hips to her breasts, nothing tentative about his touch, nothing passive, nothing mild. All action, all aggression, all heat.

“You feel so good,” she says of his cock and his needing, kneading touch, of the rapid rise and fall of his chest under her braced hands, of the culmination of it all as she rocks back and forth with ever increasing speed and intent.

“Good,” he manages to say between grunts as he bucks his hips up and drives himself ever deeper inside her. “Because you feel exquisite.”

Exquisite, perhaps, but not so fine as when Sansa leans over him and changes her rhythm and angle, because he sucks in a breath and stills her with the rough squeeze of her ass.

“Don’t move,” he says hoarsely. “Stay just like that.”

And then he takes over despite his being below and her above, and he bends his knees to gain enough leverage to pump into her, relentless and tireless, unburdened by restriction or repression. The kitchen fills with the sounds of their bodies slapping together amongst the breathless panting and sighs, the high-pitched whimpers she can’t keep in now that she’s getting the unabridged version of his hunger for her.

She’s leaned far enough over him that her breasts bounce so close to his mouth that he can taste them and he does so, one hand leaving her ass to knead one while he licks and nips and sucks the other. Sansa moans, each thrust of his hips stuttering it out into small staccato _oh-oh-ohs_ that spill out in time with each smack of flesh. She squeezes her muscles around him, a tight, wet, warm vise that only serves to make Stannis grunt and fuck her harder, her breasts a bounce, her hands braced against the floor on either side of his head, her mind a swim in the sooty, inky sea of depthless pleasure.

“Fuck,” Stannis hisses through his gritted teeth. “Fuck, Sansa.”

And then the release.

With a long guttural groan and a series of rapid fire thrusts Stannis comes, the hand that’s still on her ass squeezing hard enough to bruise, though Sansa wouldn’t mind the souvenir, his once-clenched jaw slack now as he lets the orgasm wash him over at last. She lowers her head to kiss the rapid, deep rise and fall of his chest, feels the lazy languid lift and drop of his hand, from her rear to the middle of her back, though eventually it slides off and lands with a _thwack_ on the kitchen floor.

“I take it that was sufficient?” she asks when she lifts her head to look at him.

Stannis laughs, a breathless huff that already sounds weary, regardless of how powerful he was just moments ago, all rigid muscle and determination when now he’s just a puddle of a man.

“An _excellent_ observation.”

It’s a slightly awkward piecing together of their tatters once they catch their collective breath; the disposal of a condom, Stannis squirming back into his underwear and jeans just so he can stand, Sansa dragging her sweaty hair out of her face, the gathering of their clothes. She suggests a shower and he immediately accepts, though when he initially insists she go first she has to clarify that she intended them to shower together.

“Ah,” he says, eyebrows up in faint surprise, as if her desire to be around him still mystifies him. But then his gaze drops to where her bundled up dress she’s holding to her belly does little to hide her from view. Uptick smile. “I see.”

Sansa takes a page out of his book, rolls her eyes and exhales a laugh through her nose. “Clearly.”

It’s not as spacious as the stand-alone shower is on the _Storm’s End,_ but since it’s a bathtub/shower combo there’s still ample room for the both of them, even with the breadth of Stannis’s angular shoulders. She’s still getting accustomed to the sight of him naked, and even though she’s not some shy shrinking violet, it’s still surprising to see his penis, even (or perhaps especially) when it’s flaccid. There’s something so intimate about being nude together when sex isn’t the reason. Sansa finds she likes it with him, standing here rinsing off with her head tipped back under the shower stream, Stannis beaded with water as he soaps his groin with one of her washcloths. Domesticated, in a way, though still with that wild streak of passionate abandon that leads to things like trysts on kitchen floors.

She’s all clean and ready to get out, but still she lingers after they switch places, watching as he sweeps the sudsy water off his chest and the faint ripple of his abs, watching as he always watches her. She smiles.

“I like this.”

“What, showering? Well,” he says, his throat a long stretch as he tilts his head back to wet his head and face. “We _were_ on the floor, it’s probably for the best.”

“No, I mean, _this_ ,” she says once he’s righted his head to look at her, and she points to herself and then him and then back again. “Being together. Here. Now.”

His gaze warms as he regards her a moment, serious but not unhappy, nods and steps towards her.

“I’m still stunned that you do, but I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

“You callin’ me a horse?” she asks, playfully indignant as she puts her hands on her hips.

Stannis rolls his eyes.

“No.”

Sansa grins.

“Don’t you mean ‘neigh’?”

A stern no-nonsense glare that the twitch of his mouth betrays. She bites her lip and pushes off the tile wall to take a step towards him and the steaming water that still beats on his back.

“Silly woman, you know what I mean.”

He doesn’t immediately move to embrace her but reciprocates when she does, her arms a slippery slide over his shoulders, his hands two warm applications of pressure at her waist before he finally hugs her back. She can feel his heartbeat. The inhale and exhale. The warm wet clean of his skin as she turns her head and presses her cheek to his chest. The very, very real of him.

“I may find 'us' hard to believe, but I like this too. You have to know that.”

She smiles.

“I do. I really do.”

They towel off side by side, Stannis paying keen attention to her as she slathers lotion all over her body, and when they both decide it’s too late and they’re too tired to make and eat mussels in wine, they instead head back to her room where they slide into bed, deliciously naked and clean, side by side on their backs. The little lamp on her side of the bed is the only disruption to the darkness, a warm globe of light that softens the walls to the buttercream that ices wedding cakes. Indeed, Sansa sort of feels like she _is_ stuck inside some dessert, muzzy and sleepy as she feels. Something luxurious, something decadent, but also something simple and elegant for that simplicity.

It’s soft and quiet, now, for all the commotion they made earlier. The sheets are a soft rustle when Stannis stretches out. Rain still patters the window but only just. Wordlessly Sansa rolls from her back to her side to face Stannis, and when she sees his arms are folded behind his head she takes advantage and scoots in to rest her head on his chest. He pauses briefly before he slowly unfolds his one arm and lightly rests it across her shoulders.

“What made you want to become a chef?”

He’s clearly as tired as she is, more maybe due to his age and the fact that it’s past one AM and he’s an early riser. The fatigue in his voice deepens it, grates it like rock on metal, but there is still genuine interest there.

Sansa smiles.

“Because I was horrible in the kitchen and my brother and sister made fun of me. I was something of a perfectionist little twit back in high school.”

“Oh?”

She paints the scene for him, a hysterical Robb, tears streaming down his cheeks from laughter, and a cackling Arya as they stood in the kitchen, pointing at her disastrous attempt at a birthday cake she tried making for their father. _You should have used a cake mix,_ Robb had chortled. _I did,_ Sansa had huffed before storming out of the room.

“Was it really that bad?” he asks.

“I can’t even remember what I did wrong, I had been so haphazard with the recipe and instructions. But after that I got meticulous about it. Proved them wrong by making next year’s cake from scratch and acing it. After that I moved on from baking and focused on cooking. Soon I was cooking anything and everything, whatever food I could get my hands on, I wanted to understand it. So, you know, I owe my career in part to my shithead siblings,” she says with a tired laugh.

“I know all about shithead siblings, though I’m not sure what I can thank them for,” Stannis says dryly.

“You can thank them for me,” she murmurs, tilting her head so she can gaze up at him, his neck angled awkwardly so he can look at her in frowning confusion. “If you hadn’t been fired, you’d never have started Detroit Online, and I’d never have met you.”

Stannis stares at her a long moment before surrendering to that truth, huffs a chuckle and straightens his neck to gaze up at the ceiling. Even from here, Sansa can see the contentment as he wraps his head around her words.

They talk more about what it was like in culinary school, all the hard work and side jobs she did down in Scottsdale, talk about what it’s like running an online newspaper, all the deadlines and countless edits to ensure that his website is one of the few that currently exist without a single typo or grammatical error. Talk about family. Talk about boats. Drowse to the rain. Drowse to each other.

When Sansa rolls over to turn off the light Stannis follows suit like he’s drawn to her, and when she settles back down in the dark he’s there spooned up behind her. Ensconced in his arms, his chest warm and dry against the curve of her back, her pillow a swath of cool silk on her cheek, Sansa closes her eyes. She is already a halfway drift towards sleep when Stannis mutters something into the fall of her hair, but the auburn muffles his words. She frowns with her eyes closed.

“Hmm?”

He pauses, clears his throat, and tilts his face towards the ceiling so she might better hear him.

“I said that I like this as well. Us. Here.” Spoken like she might not believe him though that’s the farthest from the truth.

Sansa smiles, and her frown melts away as she burrows back against him a bit, as she drags his arm more fully around her so she can wrap herself in his affection. Sleep begs for her attention and after such a long and ultimately wonderful night, she’s more than willing to acquiesce. Judging by his steady breathing and the heaviness that is already overtaking his limbs, apparently Stannis is in the same boat, a little pea green boat of slumber built just for the two of them, he the owl and she the pussycat, drifting off together.

“I _love_ this,” she whispers, hoping he can feel and hear the truth of that in every move and word. “Believe it or not.”

His breathing stops momentarily before it continues, and he tilts his face back to nose her hair and says no more, and for the rest of the night they lie spooned up together and sleeping, proving it to each other that in the end, it’s really not so hard to believe, after all.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Picset](http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/177602390718/bowled-over-by-jillypups-chapter)

It’s a sweet nameless dream that wakes Sansa and makes her open her eyes, but she’s not sorry for the disruption to her sleep. Dappled sunlight dances across her bedroom walls in the shape of shadowed leafy boughs, all blousy sway with the faintest tinkling of wind chimes from her neighbor’s backyard. The light is wan, either due to an early hour or a scatter of lingering clouds. Likely both. It’s dreamy and sweet, not as obtrusive as a fat summer afternoon sun, and there’s a coolness to the air that’s always present after a good long rain.

There’s also a warmth here where at some point in the night she turned to rest her head on Stannis’s chest, a warmth where his one arm is still firmly wrapped around her, holding her close. Even in sleep he can be relentless. She’s got the slow steady rise and fall from his breathing, the otherwise utter stillness of his slumber, the rustle of trees in the morning breeze that she can hear through the old single pane window. It all makes Sansa smile, close her eyes again with a long, low hum of utter contentment.

Stannis stirs at the sound of it, and she feels the stretch of his legs and the inhale of a rousing breath that gusts out over the top of her head when he lets it go. Sleepy as she still is, Sansa is no less thrilled for it when his left arm comes up to wrap her in a full-fledged embrace.

“Did I wake you,” she murmurs against his bare skin here where she slides her hand through the hair on his chest until she’s holding him right back.

“Yes,” he replies, voice deep from grogginess. “Not that I’m sorry for it.”

The drift of his right hand as he loosens his grasp on her, down her spine to where his fingertips come to a stop on the low of her back, just above her ass. It’s enough to elicit another hum from her.

“Did you sleep well?”

“I did. I had to answer a couple of work emails earlier this morning but was able to come back and fall asleep again. How did you sleep?”

“Very well,” she says happily.

“Good. I worried I would wake you when I came back to bed, but you just rolled right over. You’ve been here like a barnacle ever since.”

It’s not the most flattering comparison but she still chuckles out a froggy, croaky, sleepy laugh, her eyes still closed as she imagines it. Sansa the barnacle on Stannis the ship. In an odd way it makes sense. Still, she retaliates half-heartedly by squeezing him tighter with the arm she’s got around him. He snorts.

“Believe me, I’m not complaining. Here, scoot off me for a moment,” he says.

That’s enough to make her finally open her eyes and she does so with a pouty frown as she hefts herself up to her elbow beside him with a grunt. He’s already got his gaze on her when she regards him.

“Where are you going? We’re supposed to just lie around all day.”

The crack of a smile at her sleep-rumpled indignation.

“I’m going to brush my teeth. I want to kiss you and morning breath just doesn’t do.”

Another frown and pout.

“Well now _I’ve_ got to brush my teeth. I can’t be the only gross one.”

He draws aside the covers, sits up with the flex of abs, swings his lefts over the edge of the bed. Sansa watches the shadow and sunlight chase each other on the long, broad expanse of his back as he stands, naked as a blue jay. He turns to face her, unabashed either through the confidence of a long night of lovemaking or merely from being half-asleep. Stannis shrugs.

“After I brush mine, that’s all either of us will taste. You’ll be clean by proxy.”

 “Proxy, huh,” she says with the roll of her eyes. “Wow. Every girl wants to hear that in bed.”

In the end she brushes hers too, waits until he comes back so she can use the bathroom and do a little freshening up. Wash her face and apply some deodorant, run a brush through the tousle of her hair.

He’s waiting for her when she returns and slips out of her bathrobe and back into bed, and he's more than a little aroused and already prepared, if the condom on the nightstand has anything to say about it. He kisses her the moment she’s back by his side, his hand cupping her cheek as he presses an eager mouth to hers. Sansa winds her arms around his neck and tugs him to follow her when she rolls from her side onto her back, lifts a leg in a languid hook over his hip to pull him between her thighs.

Far slower this morning than last night though it’s still good and strong and steady. This time, though, it seems he wants to feel the push and pull of each thrust, and the slow drag of every movement is enough to make Sansa arch her back almost the moment he slides inside her. Mint-flavored kisses and licks of tongues against each other, the light drag of Sansa’s nails across his back that makes him grunt in approval.

And when she starts to whimper and squirm, having gotten as close to an orgasm as she can without a little extra stimulation, he posts up off of her, rises to his elbows and shallows out the thrusts so she can reach between their bodies to touch her way to climax. She comes and tenses hard enough that she squeezes his cock out, though he is quick enough to guide himself back in, and soon after he’s gotten off as well with that long guttural sound she’s starting to realize is his signature, the sound of a man’s very real and thorough release, the rushing escape from rules and rigidity, however literal that may be.

They lie there panting side by side for several moments after he’s slid out and rolled off of her, their limp arms between them in a V so that their hands touch, their fingers a light, loose entwine as the thin sheen of sweat dries. Sansa rests her cheek on the comforter so she can study his profile but it’s short lived, as her movement attracts his attention, and they gaze at one another for a long, steady moment. When she smiles at him, there’s only a brief beat before he smiles back at her, a small one though it is no less genuine for how faint it is. Its all lazy spent contentment here, the definition of Saturday morning pleasure, the slow seep of mutual ease and understanding that fills the room like water fills a vase.

“I think,” Sansa says after Stannis returns from tossing out the condom, “that I’m going to get on the pill.”

He raises his eyebrows in mild surprise as he crosses the room in his boxer briefs to where his clothes are neatly folded on the chair in the corner, turns towards her as he steps into and pulls on his pajama pants.

“Oh? Doesn’t the pill affect your hormones or moods, or some such?”

Sansa shrugs, loosely ties on her bathrobe and gestures for him to follow her out to the kitchen, which he does.

“I’ve been on it before and it never really affected me before.”

There’s also the very real fact that the idea of getting to rip his clothes off and, as Arya would say, bang him senseless, whenever and wherever they want, is more than a little appealing.

“Plus it’s a lot easier to pop a pill than to remember to keep this house stocked with condoms all the time. _And_ it's better for the environment.”

He chuckles at that.

“True. Well, it’s up to you,” he says, easing his long frame onto on the stools at the counter. “Just let me know the cost and we’ll split it.”

Sansa, already a bustle in the fridge getting eggs out for some breakfast, straightens with the carton half-forgotten in her hands as she stares at him. Stannis shakes his head in confusion.

“What?”

Sansa closes the fridge and sets the eggs on the counter, thinks back on the handful of serious boyfriends she’s had throughout the years. Laughs and shakes her head right back at him.

“It’s just that no guy has _ever_ offered to split the cost of birth control with me.”

“We’re in a relationship together, I’m not just some ‘ _guy_.’ You wouldn’t be getting on birth control if we weren’t together, would you?”

“No,” she says with a smile.

“It’s only fair. You yourself just mentioned that you would otherwise have to keep your house stocked with condoms. If our relationship incurs a recurring expense, it’s only fair to split the cost.”

“Such a _romantic,_ ” she laughs.

“You and that word,” he says with the roll of his eyes and a twitch of his mouth.

She makes fluffy scrambled eggs with fresh chives and her beloved Sunny Paris seasoning, a fine dusting of salt and a few grinds of the pepper mill. Stannis is a keen observer as always, until the necessity for caffeine drives him to make them coffee once Sansa tells him where she keeps it. They stand side by side, Sansa tending to her eggs at the stove while Stannis slowly depresses the coffee grounds in the French press. She can’t help but steal a glance or two at him, at the curve of his back and the wings of his shoulder blades, the flex of his forearm when he pours them two cups of rich black Grounds for Change coffee. Once he catches her with a sharp, sudden askance look, but then he’s returning the favor with a slow southerly drift of his gaze that would make her blush if she weren’t already thinking the same thing.

She lightly toasts two whole wheat English muffins and butters them while the eggs rest, and then they’re having breakfast together – like a true blue couple, she thinks – out in the back yard at the little patio table once Stannis dries off the chairs with a dish rag.

“Good eggs,” he says after the first bite, using his knife to push another mouthful onto his fork.

“Are they eggcellent?” Sansa asks with a wide-eyed look of innocence.

Stannis gives her a stern glare before nodding. He gestures towards her garden.

“I take it that’s the pride and joy over there?”

“Mmhmm,” Sansa confirms with a mouthful of egg and muffin.

“It looks good. It’s a lot bigger than I thought it would be, but I suppose if it’s supplying your restaurant, then it has to be.”

Sansa smiles, letting her look linger on him as he studies the garden in the back corner of her fenced in yard. It’s the first time he’s ever outright called Bowl’d Over a restaurant instead of just a food truck, and it isn’t lost on her, the legitimacy there.

“Yeah, well, it started off small enough. But as I expanded my menus, it called for a few additions.”

Once they’re through with breakfast they pad out to the garden, bare feet sinking in the rain-soft grass, lazy drifting clouds shading the yard here and there though the sun valiantly does its Saturday finest. She points out the rows of eggplant and carrots, cabbage and lettuces, green beans and zucchini, tomatoes and scallions, basil and thyme and parsley, cilantro and rosemary, half a dozen others whose rows nearly butt up against the trunk of the maple tree in the middle of the yard.

“Impressive. You certainly seem to throw yourself into whatever it is you put your mind to,” he says, sniffing and nodding his approval when Sansa plucks a basil leaf and holds it up for him to smell.

She smiles.

“Something we have in common.”

Stannis chuckles at that, hands in his pockets as he looks around at the otherwise modest backyard.

“There’s a first time for everything, I suppose.”

Sansa frowns, comes to stand beside him in the shade of the maple tree. Soon its leaves will change, a riot of yellows and oranges and deep scarlet, will rival the glory of her garden, but for now it’s a docile green, as mild as his comment just now though Sansa knows better.

“What do you mean?”

He shrugs and shakes his head, squinting over at the little table where they ate before he turns and looks down at her. There’s a flicker of wariness in the deep blue of his eyes, and it deepens her frown to see it there. There’s searching there too. Sansa rests her hand on his arm, slides the touch down to his hand where she laces her fingers with his.  After a lingering pause, Stannis sighs.

“My marriage was essentially the only serious relationship I’ve had, and it wasn’t a happy one,” he says with a glance to her. “Hence my endless surprise at you. _With_ you.”

“How did you meet?”

“She worked at my brother’s company as part of the QM department. Started off as just a physical relationship, mutually beneficial and initially satisfactory. But when she got pregnant, honor compelled me to ‘do the right thing,’ which is just a foolish way to set oneself up for disaster. Shireen was far happier after we divorced and probably could have thrived in two households that were far more content than a single miserable one.”

Sansa smiles sadly. Of course, he had a shotgun wedding, taking hold of his responsibility for a surprise pregnancy by grasping the fate he thought was best. Fair’s fair, Sansa thinks as she squeezes his hand. And no wonder he's so gung-ho about condoms.

“How long were you married?”

A short hard chuckle.

“Too long. Ten years, maybe 11.”

“And there were no good times in all those years? I find that hard to believe, even if you _did_ marry just for the baby.”

Stannis shakes his head slowly.

“You said we have in common the drive to give something our all, and that’s true to an extent for me. All except for my marriage. I put myself into work, into the case against my brother, into the new company, and I let my relationship whither on the vine, so to speak,” he says with a glance over his shoulder to her garden before looking back at her. “I can’t just put the blame on Selyse; I did more than enough to let it fail."

She smiles sadly to listen to him as she thinks back on her own failures in love. A lack of communication that she’s been guilty of before just to keep the peace; choosing the wrong men and knowing it and denying it to everyone; having higher expectations than any person could ever meet. Old skins she’s shed in order to let her rawer, truer self stand proud and tall, albeit, until recently, also very single.

The retreat into her thoughts and memories, her silence, that lingering frown on her face, Stannis notices them all and misinterprets them when he pulls her to face him with his free hand on her hip.

“But hear me on this, Sansa, don’t think I didn’t learn from my mistakes. A successful businessman knows how to do that, and I’d like to consider myself a successful businessman.

Her smile brightens and warms as she shakes her head and rests a hand on his chest.

“I know that, Stannis. You’ve done more than enough to show that you’re sincere. I know you've got your chips thrown in.”

He nods, gaze a blue blaze as he regards her, jaw muscles tight like a vise from determination before he speaks.

“I’m not going to let this slip between my fingers, what you and I have. I understand now that work alone isn’t enough to satisfy a man.”

The hand on her waist drops before it lifts again to lightly cup her face. She tips her head into the touch.

“After last night you better,” she says with a smug, cat-with-cream sort of smile.

He blinks a moment before he chuckles.

“Fair enough,” he says.

They do the scant number of dishes together, back door open to let in the fresh air and the still lingering scent of rain, Stannis drying what Sansa washes. After they’re done he’s in reluctant agreement when she suggests they watch television, but hilariously puts his foot down when they’re about halfway through an episode of _Nailed It._

“I am not watching this idiocy. Absolutely not,” he says rigidly with his arms folded across his bare chest as they sit together on her sofa.

“Oh come on, it’s not that bad,” she says with a laugh.

“It most certainly _is_ that bad. And the hostess of the show is beyond reprehension.”

“It’s hilarious! And at least they’re trying and learning.”

He extends an arm to gesture towards the screen. “These individuals couldn’t bake their way out of a paper bag. I’m surprised that’s not a bit that they do. It’s utterly ridiculous. Aren’t there any documentaries we could try?”

They compromise on watching _Blue Planet,_ though when he finally unfolds his arms and drapes one around her shoulders, soon Sansa’s dozing from the comfort and the clean warm smell of him, here with her legs tucked up under her.

“Are you asleep?” he asks at one point.

“Nope,” she murmurs against him. “Just napping.”

He grunts at that.

“I don’t nap.”

“Of course you don’t,” she says with a sleepy smile and closed eyes.

When Sansa eventually wakes up it’s with a smile on her face because they are now lying stretched out together, she on her side, wedged between his body and the back of the couch with her head on his chest, he on his back with his head on the arm rest and one foot on the floor with his leg cocked out towards the coffee table. He doesn’t snore, but he most certainly _does_ nap.

At least with me, she thinks with a smile.

The sea is still teeming with life on the screen, the crashing of waves and the breaching of whales, the circle of life from surf to the dark and unknown depths. She would love nothing more than to get back to her nap, and she probably would be able to pull it off if it weren’t for the sudden loud ring from Stannis’s phone on the table beside the door.

He wakes with a start, such a jolt that he half-slides off the sofa, is so clearly shocked at himself for falling asleep during the day – and probably because he’s not even in a bed – that Sansa can’t help but laugh. Stannis narrows his eyes at her and hauls himself to his feet with a groan once Sansa sits up.

“Damn,” he says when he sees whose call he missed. Gives Sansa an apologetic frown. “I need to return this call. It’s one of my editors, and she never bothers me unless it’s an emergency. I’ll take this outside, you keep watching the show.”

He’s already dialed and got the phone pressed to his ear when he steps outside on her front porch, and even though the show _is_ fascinating, there’s also something very distracting about watching Stannis pace the porch like a big cat. She can see him through the un-shuttered windows, see the occasional curt gestures of exasperation. Amused, she turns back to watch the show, wondering what it could be to get him so agitated. An uncrossed t. An undotted i. The indecency of a dangling participle.

“Sansa?” he says as he opens the door.

She turns around with a grin, mouth already open to ask about grammatical atrocities, but she freezes at the look of deep worry on his face.

“Oh my god, are you okay?”

He shakes his head.

“I don’t think so, no. I’m not sure. Can you come here a moment?”

She’s still in her tank top and panties but has her bathrobe on as well, so she simply tightens the sash and gets up to cross the room. He takes her by the hand, unusual for him, which has her even more concerned. Oh god, she thinks. What if it had something to do with fraud again? He’d hate that. Or, oh _god,_ what if it’s really to do with Shireen?

“What’s wrong, Stannis? You’re kind of freaking me out right now,” she says as she squints up at him in the bright noonday light.

He gives her hand a squeeze before letting it go to point over her shoulder. Sansa frowns with confusion.

“I don’t mean to, dear, I just couldn’t remember since it was so dark and stormy last night, but when I was outside just now on the phone, I looked over at your driveway, and—”

“Oh my _god,_ ” she gasps when she finally turns around to look at the driveway that’s empty save for her little red Kia is parked.

It’s not that her life flashes before her eyes, not really. But it does feel like someone knocked the wind out of her, and she reaches out sightlessly for something to hold onto so she doesn’t sink to her knees in a faint. From somewhere to her right, Stannis grasps her hand again and rests it flat on his forearm, presses his hand on top of hers.

“Stannis,” she says weakly, eyes already brimming with tears. “Oh Stannis, _no._ "

“I know,” he says quietly.

The crack of a sob that escapes her.

“Someone stole my baby. Someone stole Bowl’d Over.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Picset](http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/177838892508/bowled-over-by-jillypups-chapter-14-theyre-out)

“All right, now, let’s think rationally,” Stannis says from the lawn where he’s typing things madly on his phone.

They’re out front waiting for the police whom Sansa called the moment it dawned on her that her literal bread and butter was just stolen right out from underneath her. The clouds have gone away completely now, and Christ how she longs for the fire and brimstone of a good thunderstorm, something more torrential to match the windstorm whipping inside her. Instead she’s betrayed by a robin’s egg blue sky and a bright merry sun, warm breezes that bring the whine of cicadas and crickets.

In contrast to Stannis’s stoic stillness, Sansa paces back and forth down the length of the driveway like she’s a bloodhound trying to sniff out the criminal’s scent. But that comment makes her stand stock still and glare at him through tears that fall without effort, and she lifts her hand and points her phone at him like a magician with a wand about to curse someone.

“Are you telling me to _calm down_ right now?”

Because boy howdy, if there’s one thing that can flip the switch in a normally calm Sansa, it’s being told not to cry or to calm down or to bely her emotions, especially by men.

When Stannis looks up from what he’s typing, his eyebrows are dropped down in a stern line over his eyes at her retort, but he still raises his hands in the international sign of surrender.

“I may have been _unhappily_ married, but I was still married. I know better than to say that. However, you are being remarkably calm, all things considered. I’m only suggesting that we consider other avenues. We called the police, as we should, but maybe there’s another answer here. What about your sister, or Podrick? They work for you; don’t they have spare keys?”

Now her life flashes before her very eyes, but only in terms of Bowl’d Over’s spare set of keys. The jingle-jangle of them when Sansa pulled them out of her purse and tossed them to Arya a couple of months ago when she herself was too sick to open one morning. The post-it note she wrote herself afterwards and stuck to her laptop screen that said GET KEYS FROM ARYA a few days later _._ The _All right, all right, I’ll bring them to you tomorrow, Jesus, it’s nacho big deal_ Arya texted her only a few weeks ago.

“Oh my god, yes! Yes, that’s got to be it!” Sansa says with a sort of quivering sense of relief that turns her previously panicked sturdiness into jelly.  A shaking smile up at him. “My hero.”

The faintest of smiles to match the near indiscernible shake of his head. “Silly woman.”

Her fingers tremble when she texts Arya, knowing full well that she’d never actually pick _up_ the phone to answer a call.

**Sansa:** HEY. HEY.

**Arya:** HAAAAY, how’d last nite go? Did he put the sausage in ur hot pocket?

Ugh.

Sansa takes the time, however fleeting, to grit her teeth a la Stannis, closing her eyes with the firm quick shake of her head. Anything to get _that_ disgusting image out of her mind, no matter how pressing the issue at hand is. Seeming to understand this sort of body language, Stannis steps up behind her, resting one hand on her shoulder as he looks down at her phone.

“Is everything o- Christ _,_ that’s crass. Does she kiss Podrick with that mouth?”

“I really don’t want to think about _anything_ they do with that mouth,” Sansa mutters.

With a fortifying inhale of breath through her teeth, she goes back to texting.

**Sansa:** Did you take Bowl’d Over last night?

**Arya:** lol wat

**Sansa:** Tell me you took it. Just be honest, you pulled bigger pranks on me in high school than this

**Arya:** Dude, I banged my fiance all night long and I’m still bow-legged. I haven’t showered let alone done grand theft auto. Why would I want ur food truck? What am I gonna do with it?

**Sansa:** COME ON ARYA YOU HAVE THE KEYS DON’T FUCK WITH ME PLS

“Sansa,” Stannis says from above and behind her, though he’s wise to say nothing more.

**Sansa:** I CALLED THE COPS GDI COME ON

The ellipses bubble goes on and on, and Sansa is beyond livid now with her sister, because she can practically think up the long drawn out excuse her sister is typing out. _Sorry we got our Uber lost and just needed a place to crash and decided to go to brunch before you got up_ or something like _We wanted to make some extra money for the honeymoon, can we come raid the garden._

But then the ellipses stop and Sansa is left to stare at a dead text until she jumps at the sound of her phone ringing in her hand, the picture of Arya and Pod in a photobooth mocking her with their crossed eyed and stuck out tongues. She stabs the answer button so hard with her finger the nail puts a chip in her screen protector. Glares at her beloved truck’s empty parking spot as she answers the call.

“Arya, for the love of God this _really_ isn’t fu—” Sansa seethes into the phone before she’s cut off.

“Dude. Dude! I didn’t take your fucking truck because I gave you the keys forever ago, after we went to the farmer’s market. I handed them to you _in_ the truck when we left. They fell out of my pocket when I was digging around for some cash for burritos, remember?”

“No,” Sansa whispers, her free hand lifting to cover her open mouth with her fingers.

“Yeah, remember? I was ravenous that day and after we put the product in the coolers, I begged you to swing by for—”

No, she thinks, not hearing her sister anymore because now she’s got the other flashback in her mind. The afternoon she ran into Stannis in the rainy market, the serious pluck of him, the burning way he always studied her. The business card in her hand that she couldn’t stop staring at with a smile as they walked in the rain back to the truck, the card she couldn’t stop looking at even when she half-heard Arya with the jingle of keys and the tossing of them into Sansa’s lap. _Hmm? Oh yeah, thanks,_ she’d said dreamily, another glance at the rain-spotted business card before she tossed the keys in the-

“Oh _god,_ ” she says, dropping her phone to the pea gravel at the feet as she buries her face in her hands.

Too ashamed to even cry, she simply hides her eyes to keep them from seeing her own stupidity reflected in his eyes, in the cops’ eyes when they get here, in every damn person’s when she has to admit it. Oh god, my parents are going to think they raised a fool. And to think, I had the nerve to blame Arya.

“What is it?” Stannis says sharply, taking a step back to first pick up her phone. “Arya, she’ll call you back. Yes. No, we’re fine. Yes, I’ll tell her.” He hangs up and takes her by the shoulders to square her to him. “Sansa, look at me and tell me what’s wrong.”

“I can’t say it,” she moans, breath hot and damp here in the trap of her palms. It makes her already likely beet-red face all the more flushed. Makes her feel like she could just pass out from it all.

The stroke of his strong hand down the length of her hair. The tuck of their phones in the pocket of his pajama pants before he presses his other hand to the low of her back to pull her in against his chest. Her forehead bumps against his bare pectoral.

“Sansa, you can tell me. I have had plenty of bad news in my life. I can take it.”

Big sigh. Hiccup from repressed sobs. Another sigh before she drops her hands and stares up at the sky before lowering her reluctant gaze to his unwavering one. After a moment, he nods his encouragement.

“Arya gave me the stupid keys. Right after you invited me to your party. And I- I didn’t put them in my purse because it was in the back of the truck so I just, I tossed them into the change-holder on top of the console. I was, you know, I was so over the moon about the party, I completely forgot about them by the time I got home. They’ve been there for _weeks_ , Stannis.”

A long low exhale above her head and into her hair, another stroke to the back of her head.

“All right, that _is_ an oversight, but it still doesn’t excuse someone breaking and entering.”

A sad shake of her head.

“No, that’s on me too. My parsley out in the garden bolted already and I needed some for last night’s mussels. I got some out of the truck before I took a bath, and I can’t remember if I even locked the door.” She recalls the dreamy electricity that thrummed in her yesterday early evening, half-daze and all-haze. “In fact I’m pretty sure I didn’t.”

There’s the sound of cars on the street and then the steady crunch of gravel as one and then two cop cars pull into the driveway. Stannis and Sansa look up as one and step out of the way as the patrol cars roll to a stop before he presses her to him once more, giving her one of his classic gazes, steady frown, serious mouth, but also full of unabashed affection and worry for her now.

“This is serious, yes, but it’s not rock bottom, Sansa. I’ve made so many mistakes and suffered so many setbacks, but I still bounced back, and I know you will too. You are too tough a nut to let this crack you. Let’s talk to the police, however helpful _they’ll_ be, give a statement, and take the next step and call your insurance.”

Sansa bursts into tears.

In the end the police are about as useful as Stannis said they’d be, even less so after stepping out of their patrol cars to try and talk to a sobbing woman. And even though it’s a lot of empty platitudes with _way_ more “ma’am”s than she will ever be comfortable with, and a lot of bullshit like “we’ll be in touch if we hear anything,” the whole thing still takes over an hour. She sits on the porch stairs talking with one officer while Stannis goes over the perimeter of the property with the other, all strong stride and almost a head taller than the cop though he still isn’t wearing shoes.

“It’s not like Scooby Doo, where there’ll be some glaringly obvious clue,” Sansa mutters, chin in her hand as she watches them walk down the driveway again, the cop aiming his flashlight at the gravel even though it’s brighter than a light bulb to the face out here.

“It’s procedure, ma’am,” the cop standing in front of the steps says. “Now, just to make sure I have this clear, the keys were _inside_ the van?”

“For the tenth time, yes, and for the _fiftieth_ time, it was a _food_ truck. Not a van.”

“Mmhmm,” he says. “And what was this about insurance? That could get you fined, you know.”

“I had the auto liability, so I was safe on the road _and_ street legal, thank you. It was everything else I didn’t cover. I was going to, things were looking up, but, you know,” she sighs, head back in her hands where it clearly belongs.

“Right,” says the cop, and she can hear the tiny little slap of his notebook shutting. “I can see you’re upset. I’ll go finish up with your husband.”

It takes her a moment for his words to sink in, as angry and devastated and annoyed as she is, but then they do, dismissive little seeds trying to wriggle down and sprout here in the black soil of her defeated little heart.

Sansa flings her head back to glare at this sexist asswipe, or rather, this sexist asswipe’s retreating back. “Hey, this is _my_ business here, and he’s _not_ my hus— oh, to hell with it,” she finishes lamely when she realizes he’s no longer in earshot.

He probably wasn’t even listening anyway; he’s already standing next to his fellow cop while they both nod and listen to whatever it is Stannis has to say. She hopes he’s sweating like a pig – Arya would appreciate that pun, she thinks sadly – in his black uniform.

To say that Sansa feels helpless is such a gaping wound of an understatement that she doesn’t even know how to wallow in it. Simply stands and nods when the cops tell her one piece of BS after another, keeps her arms folded across her chest when they outstretch their hands to shake Stannis’s, who does so briefly and bereft of respect.

“Police,” he mutters once they’ve pulled out of the driveway. He sighs. “I had to blow the whistle on my brother myself, they were so useless. Glad to see nothing’s changed.”

“Useless,” Sansa echoes numbly, watching the patrol cars disappear down her leafy, cheery little street before turning back to the house. “I know exactly how that feels.”

 _Blue Planet_ is over, a sad Netflix screen waiting to find out what the hold up has been, and indeed it serves as just another reminder that their lovely day is ruined, one big giant theft of tangling up in one another. Even the light has changed from that wan lacey morning quality to the thicker, syrupier stuff of midafternoon, all delicacy gone, all tender drifting touch condensed into heavy-handed reality, slightly stuffy and overwarm, even with the ceiling fan lazing slowly overhead.

“You are _far_ from useless, Sansa,” he says from behind her, closing the door after they both step back inside.

“Oh yeah? Even that jerk of a cop called you my husband,” she snaps, angrily gathering her hair up in a bun that she can secure with her hair alone, there’s that much of it to wrap.

“A horrific insult,” he says dryly. “You should be _most_ offended.”

Despite herself and the situation, she can’t help but crack a smile as she turns to look at him. He’s standing in the doorway typing on his phone again. Broad bare shoulders, dusting of black chest hair, head bowed.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” she says gently, hugging herself again. “I only meant that he dismissed me. I’m the, what, the crazy lady driver with the husband who’s the only one in the house with a head full of sense? I’m the dipsy-doodle airhead of a wife with, what, like a food truck for a hobby? After _everything,_ that’s the last thing I need to freakin’ hear.”

“Sweetheart,” he says to his screen, thumbs a rapid fire _taptaptap._ A perfunctory glance up at her. “If I let every cretin out there who infuriated me get in _my_ way, I’d still be working for my piss-drunk brother watching the company go under. And now, I’m not. You’ll pull through. Plus, I’m here for you.”

Sansa sniffs, almost smiles at the term of endearment. Nods to his phone when he _finally_ looks back up from it.

“Who are you texting, anyways?”

He slips the phone in his pocket and crosses the room to her. Lightly grasps her by the shoulders, gives them a squeeze before he lets them slide down her arms to her bent elbows. Smiles tightly, sadly.

“I just fired off an article to Detroit Online for my editor to add to the homepage. A quick something about the theft of Bowl'd Over, Detroit's up and coming restaurant on wheels. I have no idea if it will do anything, but leave no stone unturned, as they say.”

Tears well up in her eyes again and Sansa shakes her head to try and be free from the onslaught, but this is too much. It’s still sort of hard to believe that he’s the man standing here giving her comfort, the no nonsense businessman she met on a sidewalk downtown. That the stony reserve of him has warmed into the man who runs his fingers through her hair like they’re sitting on some southern porch sipping iced tea watching a sunset. That the man who wears suits in 90% humidity stands here now shirtless while holding her, his pajama pants slung low on hips that she’s felt between her thighs. That the guard has dropped to such shameless affection.

“Thank you,” she whispers.

Sansa lets go of her middle to hug him instead, bows her head and presses her cheek to his chest, pouting without helping it, sniffing back and reining in the desire to bawl her damned eyes out. He opens his arms to embrace her, a light loose hold with his hands clasped at the small of her back.

“Of course,” he replies. “Anything I can do, I will.”

“I just don’t know what to do, Stannis. I just lost my _livelihood._ I just lost Arya’s and that’s _after_ blaming _her_ for _stealing_ it.”

“You do the only thing you can do.”

She tilts her head out of the lean against his chest and looks up at him. Determination and grit radiate off of him like an aura, an aura made of Brooks Brothers wool, newspaper print on fingertips, curt demands to speak to one’s supervisor.

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“You fix it.”

A deep mournful sigh out of her.

“I can’t even begin to think _how_ though. It’s like, all my thoughts made up this, I don’t know, this little cottage in a meadow somewhere. Content and sensical and designed to create and _maintain_ something, and now a storm has hit it and it’s all just rubble. I can’t make sense of anything.”

It’s fanciful but all of a sudden she _can_ see it, a little whitewashed stone cottage in a meadow by the sea, flowers in window planters and sea salt staining the picket fence. And then in the blink of an eye it explodes, scattering debris across the grassy, reedy wildflowers.

“You need something to help you focus and simultaneously get your mind off it.”

“Normally that’s cooking, but I don’t think I can bring myself to it, not now. It’s too close to ground zero.”

“Myself, I tend to find that something physical always helps. No, not _that,_ as much as I adore doing that,” he says dryly when she narrows her eyes and scrutinizes his answer. “I meant running.”

She thinks of one of her favorite shows and smiles.

“I know running’s good for you, Stannis, but god, at what cost?”

It goes over like a lead balloon, to the point where he doesn’t even get that she’s teasing. He shrugs.

“I know it can be daunting to beginners. But you’ll appreciate the distraction, believe me.”

Sansa sighs, shoulders a slump as she turns in his arms to look over his bicep at her quiet, still little house. Nothing on the television could possibly distract her. And while the chef in her knows the clock is ticking on those moules in her fridge, it really is too close to home right now. Sex could be fun but her heart isn’t even into that. She’s afraid she’ll burst into tears, and while she knows he’d comfort her even while he’s inside her, there’s nothing arousing about that imagery to her at the moment.

“All right, fine,” she surrenders. “Let’s just get it over with.”

Stannis snorts.

“What every man wants to hear.”

She ends up liking it, though the first two blocks make her lungs feel like they are on fire and that she could very possibly murder her new boyfriend, considering how effortless it looks on him. But when she warms up and steadies her pace after panting out for him to slow down or run alone, she finds there is a rhythm to it and enough of a challenge that her mind just can’t focus on the tragedy. Not when there is breath to keep steady, in through the nose and out through the mouth, not when there is a beat to that breathing that her footfalls naturally want to mimic.

Eyes on the sidewalk beneath her to avoid cracks and juts in the pavement, eyes on the passing scenery of the neighborhood. Dogs bark. Birds chirrup and flit in the trees overhead. Stannis’s steady breath and the tread of his running shoes – of course he brought workout clothes with him – and the easy, broken-in way his body moves within the gait that she’s still coltishly trying to pin down. People to dodge and sidestep when they get to a small pocket of shops and cafes, boutiques and salons.

All of it a good distraction until the burn in her lungs starts to fade as her breathing regulates and her muscles warm up. And then a strange calm comes over her, even as they cross a busy intersection in order to jog out a U-turn and head back to her house. Instead of focusing on what happened to her, like she did standing there in the living room with Stannis, now she looks ahead to see exactly what she needs to do to save her skin. Rent isn’t due for another two weeks. She’ll need a job before then and probably an advance. If she absolutely _has_ to she can run – ha – to her parents for a loan. I paid them back for the money they put into Bowl’d Over, and I can do it again, she thinks as Stannis slows them down to a walk a few blocks from her house.

She doesn’t go so far as to hunch over with her hands on her knees, but when they finally get to the front of her house she’s relieved to no longer be moving.

“So,” he says after a few moments, and he’s only slightly out of breath as he hands her the bottle of water he’s carried for them. “What’s the verdict?”

“Mm,” she hums, tilting her head back to take a drink. Straightens and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, something he studies keenly before taking the bottle back. “I like it, actually. I mean, it does sort of suck but it’s also kind of cool.”

Uptick smile before he drains half the bottle and hands it back to her.

“Spoken like a true runner. And what about your plan?”

“It’s getting there. My thoughts aren’t a disaster zone anymore. The cottage is now a fixer-upper.”

“I’ll cancel the call to FEMA then,” he quips, gesturing her to walk ahead of him when they get to her walkway.

The joke startles a laugh out of her, adrenaline-spiked as she is, warm loosy-goosy muscled as she is, which makes it easy for him to suddenly snag her by the arm and drag her back to him just as she passes him.

The late afternoon sun catches the light layer of sweat on his temples and neck as he inclines his head to gaze down at her, his moisture wicking shirt still damp when he pulls her flush to him, arm around her and his other hand cupping her face. It’s almost instinct now when she reciprocates by reaching up to slide her arms around his neck so she can take hold of him just as he does her. It’s sticky to the touch but somehow sexier for it. Their bodies are the sweaty warmth that they are whenever they get naked together, and there’s a sudden flare of arousal when he takes off his aviators to look down her, all flex of his jaw and severity of his gaze. God, she loves his hunger, loves knowing part of it is parceled out now just for her.

“You’re not just smart and sexy, Sansa. You’re _tough_. You’re tough and you’re brave and you’re irresistible. Take it from me.”

“I don’t _feel_ tough,” she whispers, head tilting back when he kisses her jaw. “I don’t feel brave,” she adds, though the very definitions of those words are starting to slip away with him so close, with him towering over her as he does, with him touching her as he does.

She is, however, starting to feel a little irresistible, if her laughing at his joke can produce such a reaction out of him.

The smell of his sweat and the mingling of it with hers, the way he drags the stem of his sunglasses down her arm before wrapping both of his around her. The- is that? Yes, the hard press of his cock through his track pants. She’s not sure if it’s the endorphins fading into something a little sultrier or the desire to keep moving forward away from what happened, but his advances are _very_ welcome to her now.

“It doesn’t matter how you feel, so long as you keep moving forward,” comes his gruff murmur here on her throat.

“I’m kind hoping _you_ keep moving us forward into the house right now, Mr. Marathon.”

When she reaches up to kiss him, the arm around her waist drops so he can take a firm grip of her ass. The knead of it makes her moan into her mouth, which in turn makes him hum, a deep rumbling big-cat hum.

“That’s the runner’s high talking, your legs are going to be like jelly in about twenty minutes.”

“Good thing I’ll be on my back, then,” she whispers.

A growl now like the revving of a motorcycle on an empty street. Instantly he releases her to bend down and haul her up and onto his shoulder, hefts her once with a grunt before he marches them towards her house.

“Goddamn right you’re going to be.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Picset](http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/178513194018/bowled-over-by-jillypups-chapter-15-autumn-has)

 

One Month Later

 

Autumn has started its damp, overcast creep into Detroit, balmy midday humidity turning to a clammy sort of evening chill that is no less lovely than late summer nights on _Storms End_ are, not when Sansa has Stannis and wool blankets to curl up with on deck. Not when they can retreat to the cozy flannel warmth of his bed, a king-size nest of blankets and the twining of their long limbs, where whimpers and sighs turn to grunts and rhythmic moans before the exhausted inhales and exhales of two people who work _very_ different schedules.

His bed is where she is now, naked and on her right side and thoroughly burrowed, one knee tucked up close to her chest, the other stretched out and hooked over Stannis’s. His arm is draped around her middle, hand curled loosely against her chest where she’s holding it in place with her own. Sansa’s hair is a tangled toss on the pillow above their heads, which gives Stannis full access to drop half-asleep kisses to her shoulder, which is what wakes Sansa up with a low, groggy purr in her throat which sounds more like a croak.

“What time is it,” she murmurs.

“You don’t want to know,” comes the gruff grating whisper against the lobe of her ear.

His hand she has so possessively pressed to her chest uncurls to flatten the palm to her skin, the start of an early-morning dance they have come to perfect, especially once Sansa realized just how tantalizing and arousing it is, waking up to sex that only makes her fall back asleep all the more soundly after climaxing. That hand knows its way around her now and so does his mouth; the former takes its time kneading her breasts while the latter plants kisses along her shoulder blade and the back of her neck, his day-old scruff a teasing tickle that makes her arch her back and press her ass against his hard cock almost as much as does the attention he’s paying to her nipples.

“That early, huh,” she says with a hitched breath when he travels the kneading roaming touch down to her belly, and she stretches out her crooked knee to give him the room he needs.

“Criminally early,” he replies, pulling her left leg back up into a clamshell position and giving it a squeeze to signal that she holds it upright in place.

There is a brief pause in Stannis’s attentions as he licks his fingers, something they both prefer to the time-consuming fumbling for and opening of a bottle of Astroglide, especially in these early hours when adventure is less on the mind than is the sleepy pleasure of near-instant gratification. Kisses are dropped to her back again when his fingers find her, a few lazy exploratory rubs to help her along before he gets down to the business of getting her off.

She reaches behind her to take him in hand, a few light strokes of her own that make him groan into her ear before he nips her throat, teeth holding her there for several moments as his fingers work her in circles and swabs, work pausing only once so he can wet his fingers again, which he does by way of holding them in front of her parted mouth. He doesn’t do this very often but whenever he does it drives her absolutely _crazy._ It’s just enough kink from the usually so straitlaced Stannis to feel deliciously wicked, but not so crazy enough as to feel like they’re beyond the pale, and so when she opens her eyes at the sudden stop of his administrations and sees his waiting fingertips, Sansa can’t help but smile and hum before she opens her mouth wider to give him a slow, long lick.

“Good girl,” he breathes roughly against her skin before lowering his hand once more.

It’s not long after his praise that she comes with a quake, and the arm he’s got beneath her he moves to pin her against his chest, her breast in his squeezing hand. Rubs her deeper and deeper into her orgasm, circles with the wet pads of his fingers until her legs shake so violently she can no longer keep her left one propped up. But that predicament doesn’t matter, as lightheaded and fuzzy as she feels, because Stannis squeezes the cheek of her ass and pushes into her while she’s still pulsing, and when he’s finally slid into the slick of her he lets out a low, stifled groan and stops.

“I love that,” he grunts out, teeth another nip to her ear before he starts moving. She can feel the hardness of his cock as her orgasm slowly fades, those involuntary squeezes highlighting just how thick he is.  And then slow, deep, firm thrusts fill her completely. “I love it when I can feel you come.”

Once he gets his rhythm Stannis rolls her onto her stomach and straddles her with her legs together between his, his elbows to the mattress on either side of Sansa’s shoulders as he pumps his hips, her climax making it easy for each slippery slide to fill her up. She arches her low back to ensure his thrusts are to the hilt, clings to the edge of the mattress under her pillow where she muffles her moans. That is, until Stannis tugs the pillow from her, not unkindly, and tosses it across the bed.

“Let me hear you, Sansa,” he says, lowering his head to beg in her ear, giving her goosebumps, making her think she could almost, almost come again. “I want to hear you.”

“Your crew are already up and at it,” she protests meekly. “They’ll hear me, too.”

His first reply is nothing but a thrust so deep and hard her eyes roll back in her head before she closes them again it is so darkly, richly wonderful.

“I don’t care if all of Detroit hears you, so long as _I_ get to. It- I love it when you make noise, it makes me, it- _Christ,_ Sansa it makes me—”

But she knows full well what it makes him do these days; she only need to make the slightest of noises before he can’t seem to contain himself, and it’s a surefire way to keep a quickie contained to just that. It’s something she cannot help but be proud of, the way she can undo him like laces on a corset. The more comfortable they’ve gotten with one another the easier it’s been, winding themselves up only to crash apart together, and so it’s with the faintest of smug, panting smiles that Sansa turns to rest her cheek on the mattress, the thrust of his hips rocking her like a little boat on a wide sea.

“Please,” she says when he pushes with his hips tilted so he hits that perfect spot. “Yes, just like that. You feel _so_ good, Stannis, please don’t stop,” she whimpers, because it’s all true and it’s all so scrumptious, sleep and sex, the thrust and the warm wet, the way she gets immediate response from him be it through his actions or his own animalistic sounds. “So good. So, so good _._ ”

“Yes,” he growls in her ear, his chest on her back, the pumps and pushes and thrusts and pullback are all so deep they push and pull at her body like taffy. “More _._ ”

“I love the way you fuck me,” she gasps. “I love the way you make me feel. Mmmm, yes, yes, _yes_.”

Another moan out of each of them before Stannis rises to his palms, one to the mattress and the other half-gripping, half-pinning her hip to the bed. Another sure sign he’s about to come for her, decadently _inside_ her thanks to the pill, and if it was arousing before, now is when Sansa always gets so turned out she thinks maybe she _could_ orgasm without external stimulation. It’s hard to get them to come together but Christ, she loves it when he gets off, because he’s getting off for her, to her, in her, because when Stannis commits, he _commits._

She rises to her elbows, drags her hair out of her eyes to look back over her shoulder up at him where he’s already boring a lust-filled gaze into her, eyes clouded from concentration, from consumption, and finally from conclusion as he gives her two or three more jaggedly paced thrusts, teeth a tight clench before he shudders and lets go. His hips stop moving but then pump weakly as he comes in pulses similar to her own, pulses she both feels and relishes and claims for herself.

Sansa, instantly awash in the tingling afterglow of mutual satisfaction, immediately sinks back onto the bed, her arms stretching out and then folding beneath her cheek in lieu of a pillow. Stannis gingerly, slowly, teasingly almost, pulls out of her, making them both suck in a breath at the sudden lack of connection.

“I have to shower before work,” Stannis says quietly, kissing her spine once before easing off her. Wordlessly he retrieves her pillow, nudges her shoulder lightly to rouse her so he can he put it back in place underneath her head.

“I know,” she murmurs happily, dreamily as she turns to face him. “You go on ahead, I’ll get up in a bit.”

A bit. More like in three or four hours. Something they both know.

The bed creaks when he sits up and kisses her forehead before the springs lighten completely as he swings his legs over and gets to his feet.

“All right, just don’t forget to eat something before you go. Chef’s here all week, so he can whip it up while you get ready for work.”

“Hey, mister, I am the _only_ chef around here,” comes her half-asleep murmur as she watches him stand in the wan near-autumn morning light that streams from the oval portholes window behind him.

Stannis cracks a smile and shakes his head, gazes fondly down at her before kneeling on the mattress to kiss her again. She has just enough reflex to catch him with a hand to the back of his neck to hold him in.

“Point heard, chef,” he chuckles against her mouth. “Don’t forget, you have a fresh uniform hanging in my closet.”

He kisses the palm of her hand when he gently pries it from the nape of his neck, set it down neatly on the pillow in front of her face, before easing out of his kneel to stand once again.

There are the faint noises of his shower and the scent of his rosemary and lemon are all it takes her to drift back to sleep with a smile on her face and the warm luxurious ache between her legs. The occasional rustle and rock and creak of the boat, the shuffling open of a sliding closet door, the sink of the bed when Stannis sits to presumably put on his shoes. The sweetest of it all: the light drift of his fingers through her hair, his silent _goodbye_ , _dear_. But none of it is enough to rise above the soothing sounds and sensations that have become a near-daily lullaby to Sansa, and so the most she does is hum in deep-tissue satiation before eventually the cabin is quiet and she surrenders to sleep.

It feels like only a second when her phone wakes her up, but a glance at the digital clock on Stannis’s nightstand tells her it’s almost 10am. There are lots of procrastinating stretches of the arms, the legs, the slightly sore back she arched so achingly just to get more of Stannis inside her before she finally surrenders to the angrily vibrating phone on what she considers to be _her_ nightstand now. Sansa groans good naturedly when she sees who it is.

“What’s shakin’, bacon?” she says, promptly clearing her throat when she realizes she sounds like a hungover frog.

“Hey sugar booger,” Margaery says breezily amidst bustling café noises in the background. “How’s my sexy little chef?”

“Exhausted,” Sansa yawns, wiping her eyes with her free hand.

“Aww, honey, still? How long’s it been?”

“A little over a week since Oberyn bumped me from sous to executive chef.”

What he had really done was pop open a bottle of champagne at the end of a shift after Sansa staged as chef for over six hours. He proudly and loudly proclaimed her the new Jefe of Tapastry. Later, when Sansa told Arya the good news, her sister replied that she’d just call her Jeff for short. Sansa smiles and then chuckles at the memory.

Margaery laughs outright when Sansa retells it.

“Hey, speaking of that little devil, don’t forget we’re going dress shopping with her later this week. Jeyne, Meera and Wylla are going to be there too, so I’m sure it will end up an over-the-top shit show.”

“I haven’t forgotten. I’ve been saving my shekels for sure, which isn’t actually very hard now. Oberyn pays a _very_ competitive salary. _With_ benefits.”

“Oh?” Margaery’s voice turns shrewd. “Are we considering permanently trading in the yoke of self-employment for the gilded cage of working for the man?”

Sansa snorts. “Oh please, your grandmother has a 49% stake in Tall, Dark and Brewdy. You’re 2% away from your own gilded cage, missy.”

“Now, now, it was an honest question! No need to get cranky, sleepyhead.”

Sansa sighs. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to get snippy.”

“I should call you hedge clippers,” Margaery says with a sniff. “What’s going on, babe? Everything okay with you and Grumpy Cat?”

Sansa chuckles and then sighs as she finally sits up in bed.

“No, we’re better than ever. We spend almost every night together, either his place or mine. I’m wiped out but happy. I guess I’m still just bummed about losing my baby. That was my own little world I made for myself and I let it slip through my fingers.”

“So save up for more than just a girls’ day out, save up to get another baby. Bowl’d Over 2.0. Bowl’d Over, Take 2. 24 Carrot Bowl’d. I don’t know.”

“It’s a competitive salary but it isn’t _that_ competitive. I work ten, 11 hours a day for my money, and I stll have bills. I would have to work another fifty hours a week to get another truck.”

“There’s always loans, honey. Hey, where are you- no, no, no, Bronn, _no,_ I want the f _risée over_ _there._ _Ugh, men are useless. I’m going to have to call you back.”_

“I have to get ready for work anyways. Tell Bronn I said hi, though!”

“I’ll go one further and kiss him for you.”

“Considering you regularly seem like you’re going to wring his neck, he better thank me for the de-escalation.”

“Hey, you don’t know his kinks, he might miss the ass-kicking,” Margaery says with a laugh. “Anyways, text me later, sexy Jeff!” and just before she hangs up, Sansa can hear Bronn shout _Who the fuck is sexy Jeff_ in the background.

Sansa laughs and tosses her phone to the bed, hauls her work-weary, sex-sore body up and into the shower. There’s almost as many of her toiletries here as there are at her own place, and the entire bathroom smells like the perfect mingle of the two of them once she’s through with it. Sweet soft to crisp clean, like walking past different herbs in her garden.

Makeup, deodorant, towel-dried hair in a bun, freshly cleaned chef’s coat (thank you Stannis, she thinks as she buttons it on). Loose pants and her horribly embarrassing, insanely comfortable shoes that are basically the restaurant industry’s version of Crocs. She’s halfway down the narrow hall before she snaps her fingers and shakes her head and turns right around to make the bed, but not before she spritzes the sheets with a sample of her favorite perfume.

Keep ‘em wanting, she thinks with a smile as she re-shoulders her knife bag and heads upstairs to the main floor, past Stannis’s office where she’ll find him sometimes after her shift ends, arms folded over his chest, mid-doze in front of a pile of work. Past the little den where they hole up on her nights off and watch classic movies, just about the only genre they can agree upon (Sansa’s favorite is _Meet Me in St. Louis._ Stannis’s is _The Ghost and Mrs. Muir_ ). And up into the kitchen where they cook together and, when the staff is gone for the night, frequently tear each other’s clothes off and put those high counters to good use. And into the dining room where—

Where she finds Stannis’s daughter Shireen, flipping through a textbook while idly popping grapes in her mouth, sitting at the table in a shaft of light that glosses her hair to a shade so black it’s nearly blue. She’s lost in her own world, immersed in the world of academia, and the leg she has crossed over the other bobs to some unheard tune, her ballet flat an occasional slap against her heel. Sansa, still sight unseen in the galley kitchen, bites her lip and stares for a moment.

It’s not like she hasn’t met Shireen other than that initial meeting on the island after Stannis’s race, but this is the first time it’s just been the two of them alone without any social function pretense as a buffer. And the fact that there’s only a few years’ difference in age is something that makes Sansa wonder just what Shireen thinks of her. Vapid Trophy Girlfriend? Gold Digger? Daddy Issues?

She stands there, unsure of how to approach, but then Shireen drops a grape, swears under her breath, and ducks down to retrieve it under the table, only to right herself in her chair and look up in time to see Sansa just standing there. She winces, smiling, and drops the offending grape back in the bowl before wiping her fingers on the thigh of her jeans and looking back up at Sansa, and they both of them jump at the sudden eye contact.

“Crap, I’m sorry if I’m intruding,” Shireen says with a hand on her chest before she flips her book shut. “I left this here the other day and I have an exam tomorrow, so I figured I’d just, you know, linger and study a bit before going back to the distractions on campus.”

Shireen moves to stand but that finally snaps Sansa into action, and she swiftly steps out of the kitchen and into the dining area, hefting the strap of her knife bag a little higher up on her shoulder.

“Shireen, wait, no, you don’t have to leave, least of all on my account. I’m just still adjusting to my hours at the restaurant, or else I never would have still been here to bother _you,_ ” she says, smiling. “I’d want to study and relax here too,” she says, gazing around at the elegant space of tranquility.

Shireen smiles easily enough at that. “Yeah, it’s a great little leviathan, isn’t it? I was so proud of my dad when he finally bit the bullet and got it. It’s dad’s little private nation here. Well,” she adds dryly. “More like his divorce present to himself.”

Both women laugh.

“Sorry, maybe that’s bad taste. Mom just never approved of the extravagance, though I always tried to tell her it was less about the fancy-pants aspect with him and more about the independence and autonomy.”

Sansa feels a flare of pride, because now she understands that part of him. Stannis isn’t so much about the decadence but about the ability and means with which to _make_ things decadent. Not quite a power trip but more of the safety net for himself and those he cares about. Sansa, eager to maintain the conversation, slings the strap of her bag over the dining room chair next to the one she sinks into.

“I get that completely,” she says with a smile.

Shireen tips her head to the side as she regards Sansa, not really _seriously_ but not flippantly either. Very much her father, though there’s more lightness to her demeanor, not as much sternness, than there is to Stannis’s. It makes Sansa’s heart ache in a strange way. “Wish I Knew You” by The Revitalists comes to mind. She wonders what he was like back when he was Shireen’s age. Hell, my own age, she self-corrects.

“You know what, I _know_ that you do. My dad’s talked about your ‘compatibility’ at length,” she air quotes with a laugh, mimicking her father’s deep timbre at the quoted word. “Well, I mean, at length for him,” she amends, and then she smiles, genuine. “And for what it’s worth, I’m really, _really_ happy for you guys.”

“Yeah?” Sansa asks, unable to bite back the way her smile broadens into a happy, happy beam, because to hear Shireen say that is like a bright flare of sunshine on a winter’s day.

“Totally. I haven’t seen him this content since- hmm,” she interrupts herself. A sightless frown while she stares over Sansa’s shoulder and ponders it before she looks back to Sansa. “Honestly, I don’t really remember a time he was well and truly _happy._ Maybe vindicated when he got Robert indicted, but that’s not really the same thing.”

Sansa thinks about all the unassuming things about Stannis Baratheon that started and continued to pluck on her heart strings until he was essentially playing her like a harp. Stoic, quick wit, endless drive that translates to a _very_ healthy appetite in bed. Attentive, relentless, knows a good organic meal when he tastes one. She realizes she’s sitting there grinning like an idiot.

“I’m really happy, too,” she says with a blush and a laugh when, but her smile fades somewhat when she thinks back on her conversation with Margaery. “I just wish I had my food truck back.”

Shireen frowns and reaches over the table to give Sansa’s forearm a comforting squeeze.

“I was _so_ sad when I heard that. My dad was apoplectic, he was so freaking pissed on your behalf. Said it was all he could do not to go out and buy you a new truck, but, and I’m using his words here, that if he tried to do that you’d run him over with it, put it in reverse, and run him over again.”

Sansa laughs as she stands and grabs her knife bag by the strap, depositing it on her shoulder.

“Yeah, I guess I’ve got a bit of an independent streak.”

Shireen gets to her feet as well. There’s something of a mischievous smile on her elfin face.

“Just one of the many things he loves about you.”

Spark and tingle and sear, a firework made of champagne, the immediate rapid beating of her heart like some winged creature. _Love._

“Well,” Sansa says, her voice only a little wobbly as she nods towards the outside stairway that leads to the dock. “Let’s hope that independence can get another truck. The way to do that is to get my butt to work before I’m late.”

“I’m positive you’ll do it,” Shireen beams as she trails after Sansa.

“Thanks,” Sansa says sincerely, though inside she’s still a bundle of apprehension.

Will she? Won’t she? _Can_ she?

Shireen stands on the deck, watching Sansa disembark, and when the elder of the two looks up, the younger has a bright smile and enthusiastic wave goodbye for her that Sansa returns wholeheartedly before heading away from the slip and towards the parking lot. She’s almost out of Stannis’s row when suddenly there’s a shrill whistle behind her.

“Sansa! Sansa, wait!”

She turns around and sees Shireen leaning over the railing as far as she can (but not as far as Jeyne went), cupping her hands around her mouth.

“What’s up?” Sansa shouts back.

“Remember the sea turtles!”

A brief pause as Sansa stares at the college girl. Sea turtles?

“ _What_?”

“Be a sea turtle! For the truck!”

For the rest of the afternoon Sansa is fairly sure Shireen dabbles in hallucinogens, and it doesn’t hit her until that evening when one of the waitstaff idly mentions to the dishman how she can’t wait to get a treadmill so she can run indoors during Michigan’s frigid winters.

“Oh my god, _yes!_ ” she gasps, dropping the endive she was cleaning to pick up her phone.

 ** Sansa:  ** Hey, handsome!

 ** Stannis:  ** What did we discuss about exaggeration?

 ** Sansa:  ** That you're wrong about it. Anyways, I have a favor to ask you.

 ** Stannis:  ** Ask away, dear.

 ** Sansa:  ** I need you to train me to run a marathon.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Picset](http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/179389669528/bowled-over-by-jillypups-chapter-16-behind)

 

November

“Behind, Chef,” Sansa’s sous chef Edric says as he squeaks behind her with a tray of tenderized octopus that’s ready for the final cook.  

It’s more of a shout, really, to be heard over the sizzle and steam, the clank of pots and the clatter of porcelain dishware, and all of the other shouts between cooks and waitstaff, the expediter’s barking orders as she makes sure whole tickets get filled before a plate goes out.

“Heard,” Sansa replies before dipping a clean spoon into Anders's velouté sauce and tasting it. “More salt,” she mutters to herself before adding a few extra dashes.

She turns to toss her tasting spoon in the sink, wipes her hands on her chef coat as she pauses for a fleeting moment to survey her kitchen. While the dining room of Tapastry is dark mahogany and rich reds and plums, candles and fresh flowers, Spanish guitar with the occasional live Flamenco show, her kitchen is white and glittering, spotless floors and stainless-steel counters so clean she’s already snagged Oberyn’s first E grade on his health inspection. Brightly lit, her kitchen is the starched virtue to the dining room’s sultry sin, and it’s currently still bustling even though they’re only 40 minutes away from closing.

Sansa smiles, hands on her hips a moment as she takes it in. Anders, her saucier, is working the sauté station while Edric is on the grill. Her team of cooks, four altogether, assemble plates on the line while Dorea expedites with a clean rag in hand, ready to wipe off even the smallest splash of sauce from the rims of plates.

“Hey, I need two more lamb lolly tapas, guys,” Sylva says as she bursts through the kitchen doors, her hair up in a flawless ponytail even though they’ve been slammed all night. “That’s six all day!”

“Heard,” Edric says over his shoulder, moving swiftly from tonging octopus onto the grill to the walk-in for another rack of lamb.

Sansa frowns and stalks to the center of the sprawling kitchen.

“Hey, staff! When someone comes in with a ticket, I want _everyone_ in here to answer back! Edric may be on grill but he’s not the one doing the plating, is he? I don’t want anyone playing dumb or screwing something up under the pretense of not having _what_?”

“Heard!” her staff shout in unison.

“Is that understood? Where are my two words?” Sansa shouts.

“Yes, Chef!!” comes the chorus.

Nodding firmly, she crosses the enormous room to stand by Dorea, arms folded across her chef’s coat as she helps inspect the four lamb tapas before Sylva whisks them away on a tray.

“Everything looking good before it goes out?” she asks her expediter.

“Yes, Chef,” Dorea says dryly, peering at a plate of saffron scallops before nodding her approval to the server waiting to take it out. “And we’ve kept ticket times under 20 minutes all night.”

“Good, good,” Sansa says with a sigh. “Lord, we’ve been killing it, lately.”

“You look about half-murdered yourself,” Dorea says, shifting her well-trained gaze from the line to Sansa’s face.

Sansa glares at the poised, unruffled woman with mock-indignation.

“How dare you,” she says.

Both women laugh, Sansa louder than the other. She knows exactly what she looks like. Makeup barely there thanks to sweat, cheeks and nose pink from the heat, hair a damp mess that nowhere near rivals Sylva’s impeccable updo. Essentially she is in her natural habitat, and no searing insult to her appearance could coax her from the merry little fire that crackles in her heart whenever she gets to run a kitchen.

“Seriously though, you want to stay behind after your shift and have a glass of wine with me?” Dorea asks, handing Sylva the two other lamb tapas when the latter girl bustles in for them. “Could help you unwind.”

Sansa almost groans at the luxurious thought of it.

“I wish I could, but I’m training for that marathon, remember?”

Dorea actually lifts a hand and presses it to her chest as she gasps and stares open mouthed at Sansa.

“You can’t drink _wine_ while training for a marathon? Christ, Sansa, what on earth made you sign _up_ for that?”

Sansa laughs.

“Yes, of course I can, I just can’t right _now_ because I’ll be jogging home. I walked to work this afternoon, so I wouldn’t be tempted to skip it. It’s part of my, you know, couch to 26.2 program,” she offers, not bothering to cover up the surge of pride her voice.

Because so far, it’s _working_. Over the past two months, she’s gotten into the habit of five runs a week with varied times and distances. Not bad progress when her first four-mile run made her want to barf all over her new Hoka One Ones.

“Oh, well,” Dorea says, visibly relieved as she wipes the edge of a shallow bowl of ajo blanco. “So long as you’re not _completely_ deprived.”

“Not deprived at all,” Sansa smiles, thinking of the leg massages she gets on the regular now, Stannis’s strong hands bringing life back to aching muscles. “Just _sore._ ”

“I can’t even imagine,” Dorea says. “The only running I do is when Nordstrom has a sale.”

They finish out the evening with relative ease, the only complaint from the dining room occurring when the new server Arthur forgets to tell the customers that they need four hours’ notice for the paella. Sansa is more than a little happy to be head chef at the end of busy nights, when she’s got a dishwasher and third shift staff to take care of breaking down the kitchen instead of having to do it herself.

She changes in the bathroom, stuffs her dirty clothes into a Jansport backpack with the wrinkle of her nose before scrubbing her face and neck with soap and warm water. Deodorant and a quick brush through her hair before she pushes her fleece headband into place over her ears. Dons her warmest jogging gear, long pants and thick thermal hoodie, turns her Pandora station to Yacht Rock just in time to hear “Brandy” by Looking Glass, and picks her way through the slippery loading area and out into the brisk chilly night air. Stretches her quads, pulls up the Stopwatch screen on her Fitbit, glances up and sucks in a surprised gasp of cold air.

“Stannis!”

He’s leaning against a car a dozen feet away here in the parking lot, misty, drizzly streetlight dappling him through the barren trees, though it’s so wan by the time it reaches his black-clad, broad shoulders that it nearly absorbs into him. He pushes off the car, arms dropping from where they were crossed over his chest, walks towards her with as much sincere intensity as the first time he did so in the farmer’s market. Sansa shakes her head in disbelief at the sight of him, unable to keep the still-giddy smile that blooms on her mouth, and she pauses her music as she walks towards him.

“How was work, dear?”

“I- well, it was good, we killed it all night,” she says, finally letting go of that previously frigid air in a warm gust of breath that clouds between them.

“I’m glad to hear it,” he says, and when she asks how _his_ day was, he tells her it was fine, though there was no killing involved.

Sansa laughs, but then she shakes her head again.

“What on earth are you doing here?” She glances at her Fitbit again. “It’s past ten, you’re usually in bed by now.”

He shrugs as he approaches her, and her smile broadens as she tilts her head back for the kiss she knows he’s about to give her. They cup one another by the elbows as they kiss, two pairs of gloved hands a simultaneous nylon rub against fleece and microfiber, and that’s when it hits her. She draws back, still smiling.

“You’re dressed for a run.”

“So I am,” he says dryly, and though it’s hard to see in this pocket of half-darkness, she can hear the amusement, hear the half-smile he’s likely sporting. “I wanted to join you tonight. You chose me to train you, after all. It would be remiss for me to be absent during your evening runs.”

“But your schedule,” she says, her protest all halfhearted wheedle as she toys with the rubber grip of his jacket’s zipper.

“I’m my own boss,” he says. “And I make my own schedule, so I simply changed it. It was foolish for me not to when you took the chef’s position for Oberyn.”

“You’re changing your work schedule for me, coach?” she asks, abandoning the fidget with his zipper to slide her arms up and over his shoulders, her hands clasping at the back of his neck where a scarf is snugly wrapped and tucked into the collar of his running jacket.

He follows suit, abandoning her elbows to loop his own arms in a loose circle around her waist.

“I would be a poor coach if I didn’t.”

Sansa smiles. She knows him by now, how practicality and logic tend to take the blame for what are otherwise blatant gestures of affection; patronizing her food truck, throwing parties, bailing out her broke-as-a-joke sister. He might see a schedule change as a necessity to help her with her speedwork and distances, but she just sees it as another way for them to spend time together and so she’s smiling when she lifts up on her toes to kiss him again.

“Well, it makes sense,” she murmurs.

He hums before he opens his mouth so he can push his tongue against hers, his hands sliding down from the small of her back to cup her rear and give it a slow, firm squeeze before they slide back up to their more respectable – though not nearly as fun – position on her back.

“Oh?” he finally says against her mouth. Another open-mouthed kiss before a lingering closed one.

“An excellent boyfriend would of _course_ make an excellent coach.”

Stannis turns his head and snorts, though he tightens his embrace at the sound of her words, a warm wiry Stannis hug that Sansa has learned to glean the affection from, one she happily burrows into.

“Tell that to your friend Margaery. She can’t keep her mouth shut when it comes to spewing accolades for _her_ boyfriend, but she didn’t speak to him for a full week after he tried teaching her to snowboard.”

They take a few more moments greeting each other, warm kisses to contrast the late autumn air around them, before setting off side by side down the sidewalk. As always he’s tall but thanks to extra layers he’s also thicker, broader, more formidable even in jogging gear with reflective tape on his sleeves and the sides of his pants. A comfort, too, as he has come to be for her, in so many ways she’s lost count. These day’s it’s his strength and dogged fortitude that willingly lend themselves to those around him who are willing to reach up and snatch it, and lately Sansa has been all grabby-hands as she figures out how to pull her life together.

The streets get darker and quieter the further they jog away from the restaurant towards Sansa’s house where they’re to spend the night, though there is still the occasional swing of headlights around a corner and the _shush_ sound of tires on asphalt. And there is her steady breathing that mirrors Stannis’s now, more or less; not so much wheezing or panting, instead the more controlled inhale through the nose and exhale through the mouth that, together, serve as another way to keep pace with herself. Breathe to the footfalls, footfalls to the breath, a symbiotic system of checks and balances that have helped her to slowly come to _enjoy_ running, instead of using it as a means to an end.

The wind is crisp and biting but exhilarating at the same time. The chill of her nose and the almost-snow taste to the brisk air that floods her lungs with each inhale both serve to invigorate, and the cold humidity is almost cleansing after being holed up in the kitchen for twelve hours. Deciduous trees line the streets, their usually leafy branches frozen in bare-naked ballerina poses or yoga stretches above their heads. Without foliage weighing them down, Stannis doesn’t have to duck under boughs so much as he did a month ago, and their evening sidewalk run is far smoother for it. That is, until he suggests working on speed.

“How do you feel about some sprints?”

Sansa groans, or rather, loudly exhales through her mouth. It’s with no small amount of pride that in just a couple of months she’s been able to get to a comfortable pace that nearly matches Stannis’s. That is, until they sprint. Age is just a number, but when they’re sprinting, it’s absolutely _nothing_. He can, and does, leave her in his wake each and every time, those 17 years between them be damned.

“Fine,” she huffs, swallowing in order to wet her drying throat. “Eat my dust.”

“I’ve already eaten,” he chuckles, only slightly out of breath.

Tonight is no different than any of their other speedwork runs. In less than two minutes he’s several lengths ahead of her, though his rapidly   diminishing figure does nothing to discourage her like it used to. Rather it makes her grit her teeth and lower her head, turn up her music as she digs down for just a little more speed, a little more endurance, a little more Sansa-strength.

 _Yes!_ she thinks triumphantly as she rounds the corner onto her own street. _Take that, baby!_ because he’s slowing down considerably – especially for him – and the sprint fades to a run to a jog to a walk and then a complete standstill, clearly winded only a few houses down from her own. Sansa easily has another block or two under her belt at this pace _._ Passing him for the first time will be almost as satisfying as crossing the finish line next May, and the thought alone makes her grin like a cat with cream.

“Damn. _Damn._ Sansa, wait,” he says, turning to face her at the sound of her approaching footfalls, his hands held up to whoa her.

She slows down to avoid collision, half-laughing and shaking her head at what she can only assume is his ego.

“Why, so you can keep me from officially beating you for once?”

Stannis takes her lightly by the shoulders, positioning her so that she’s directly in front of him, huffs out a few breaths as he catches his own, shakes his head himself with a downcast gaze before he finally meets her eyes.

“I was going to mention this once we got home, but I’m afraid the, ah, delivery schedule was a little premature. I meant for it to be brought here tomorrow after I broke the news to you.”

Now they’re both frowning, Stannis in his reluctance to fully explain himself, Sansa in confusion.

“What are you talking about, delivery? What’s going on,” she says, trying to glance around him to see what the hell he’s talking about, but each time she does he takes the small step necessary to block her view. “Stannis, please, tell me.”

 He shakes his head after another deep exhale, reaches out and takes her by the hand.

“I’ll show you instead. Come on,” he says, stepping out of her way so they can walk, hand in hand, towards the house. “And for whatever it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

“What is this about? You’re kind of freaking me out.” More than kind of, really, but she’s trying to remain calm, here.

“You remember that article I posted on the website about your truck?”

“Yeah,” she draws out slowly, her heart racing as she puts two and two together. _Oh god, oh god, oh god._

“Well,” he says, and she already knows what he’s going to say before he adds, “someone emailed in a tip about an abandoned food truck downtown, and, well, we found it this afternoon. I didn’t think the towing company would get to it so soon, I thought they’d wait until tomorrow morning.”

“Oh, god,” she whispers as they pass her neighbor’s fenced in yard, her gloved hand flying to cover her mouth.

Because there is a banged up little truck on blocks in the driveway, all four tires missing and the sides covered in graffiti. It looks grey and sad and forlorn in the dark, listing slightly to the side on its slightly uneven cinderblocks, and Sansa thinks of phrases like _ridden hard and put away wet,_ and suddenly she’s fighting back years.

“Before you get too emotionally invested, I’m not 100% sure it’s Bowl’d Over. It was completely stripped of any signage and they stole the license plate.”

She’s walking around it, running her gloved fingers over the loops and swirls of spray-painted tags and vulgar language, her forehead creased in such a deep and heartbroken frown that it feels like a migraine. The streetlight across the street casts a wan light on the back of the truck, but it’s enough that she can see the dent Arya put in the rear bumper the first time she was allowed to drive it. Sansa smiles sadly, crouches down to touch the familiar wound, here where it rests with all the other, newer, injuries to her beloved truck.

“No, it is,” she sighs. “I can tell, it’s my baby.”

“I knew you’d be able to discern if it were,” he says quietly from behind her.

“God, what kind of asshole _does_ this,” she mutters as she stands up again.

“Your average run of the mill asshole, I’m afraid,” Stannis says. “The world is full of them.”

The door in the back is unlocked and she’s able to yank it open in order to confirm another suspicion, that it’s been completely stripped. Gone is her little refrigeration unit and her sandwich prep table, gone is the griddle and grill, the tiny stovetop on which she would boil lentils and whole wheat pasta. It’s as empty as a tomb, and the dark little pessimist in her supposes it sort of is. A tomb for dreams and possibility, of pull-yourself-by-the-boot-straps and make something for yourself.

Sansa starts to cry.

Stannis gently draws her away from the open door to the truck and pulls her, not unkindly, against his side where she turns to rest her cheek against his chest.

“Try not to despair,” he says. “Think of the money saved by finding it, regardless of condition. That alone saves tens of thousands.”

“Yeah, but all the equipment is _gone,_ Stannis. Like, gone. Not a dish towel, not even a goddamn spatula is left. They took _everything._ ”

“Clearly it’s going to take time and work, but it can be done. We can turn this around, sweetheart.”

“I don’t know how. I know it’s better to have a truck than no truck at all, but I don’t how I can afford this. Just looking at her like this really sucks. She needs a _ton_ of work. I think maybe I’m, I don’t know, maybe I’m fooling myself, thinking I can do this.”

“You’re not alone, Sansa. You have your sister, your friends. You have the marathon coming up. And while I know you want to go it alone, you also have me. I can be a formidable ally, if need be.”

She can’t hear him breathe but she can feel it, the way his ribs expand and contract against her cheek that’s still pressed to his chest. Sansa closes her eyes and sinks into the feeling. The rustle of their jackets together as he moves his arm more protectively around her, a warm vise in the cold night air, a comfort against the no-nonsense reality of what happened to her livelihood. And right then, right there, Sansa is forced to admit to herself that while standing on her own two feet is what she wants and needs in order to be happy, having him to lean on is more than a little desired. Independence and support, autonomy and camaraderie, respect and adoration.

“Thank you for helping me, Stannis. I know I’ve pushed back on it sometimes, but I just really want you to- no, I _need_ you to know how much it means to me,” she murmurs.

Sansa tilts her head back in order to gaze up at him in the weak watery streetlight, at the shadow and light that paint him along the sharp angle of his jaw and the jut of his cheekbone, the brow-line that is only slightly furrowed as he lowers his gaze to hers. A long beat of silence that stretches into several seconds before she feels his chest expand again as he opens his mouth to speak.

“Of course I’m going to help you, Sansa. I always help those whom I love.”

There’s no feeling of fireworks at his words, no shrieking giddy whoop of a sensation, but instead there is a warm, pooling feeling like the drizzle of syrup over hot French toast, something thick and sure, something rich and powerful, something so very _assured_ of itself inside her to hear Stannis say that he loves her. Something so _very_ reciprocated. Sansa smiles and wraps her arms around him, closes her eyes again briefly to feel him squeeze her back with the arm he has around her shoulders.

“And I love those who help.”

Another long stretch of silence before he moves, his arm loosening as it slowly drops from around her, his hand a drift down the length of her spine before he takes one step back to regard her.

“Are you saying you love me, Sansa?” he asks, deep voice even lower, graveled from the hush and the wonder and the disbelief, even after so many months.

“No,” she smiles. “I’m telling you that I’m _in_ love with you.”

He is full of pauses tonight, but the one that tick-tocks between her admission and the moment he cups the back of her head and kisses her is by far the shortest. And then there are no pauses anymore, no hesitations or caution or doubt. There is the fumbling of house keys after he walks her backwards to the house, half lifting her up as they take the stairs up to the porch. There’s the soft grunt she makes when her back bumps up against the front door as they make out like a couple of teenagers in the porchlight, the huff of laughter out of him when she drops the keys and mutters _son of a bitch_ before he picks them up for her and opens the door behind her.

And then there’s all the love.

It’s a circular dance between urgent and take-your-time, a back and forth volley from tearing each other’s clothes off on the way to her bedroom to the long, lingering kiss before he pushes himself inside her. From how she arches her back and reaches back to press her palms to the wall to keep from smacking her head against it, all the way to how he pauses after one full firm thrust to kiss her, hungry and deep and thorough, and Sansa doesn’t need to hear the words when she can feel them so completely. This is _love_ , the good strong love of unwavering conviction, the kind of love she’s always craved, the kind of love she thinks she’s had for a while now, the kind of love she’s going to bathe in for the rest of her days, if she’s lucky.

By the time they’ve wrung orgasms from each other there’s a lazy snowfall just outside her bedroom window, fat feathery things that drift down from the sky like tiny angels, silent little kisses of upcoming winter. He’s on his back and she’s on her side, head on his chest where she likes it best, and he’s dragging a drifting touch of his fingertips up and down her arm. It’s all very lazy and cozy, a perfect thing to watch as they catch their collective breath from the comfort and warmth of her well-used bed, the covers pulled up only halfway as they let themselves cool down.

“I’m so happy I met you, baby,” she says with a happy sigh, her eyes half-closed from that post-coital dreaminess as she gazes up at him, feeling sort of silly but so loosy-goosy happy that she doesn't care.

An immediate frown, one that she was half-expecting, and it’s all she can do to keep from bursting out laughing when he wrinkles his nose.

“I agree with the sentiment, but ‘baby’? You’re calling me _‘baby’_ now?”

“Well, sure, why not? Plenty of people call their loved one ‘baby.’”

“Are they expected to reply?”

 _Now_ Sansa laughs.

“Fine then, you stick in the mud. What about ‘honey’?”

Another scowl.

“There is nothing saccharine about me.”

A silly thing to say after every gesture he’s made, after everything he’s done to woo her and to keep her. A _ridiculous_ thing to say when they’re naked together with their legs entwined and his arms around her, with the smell of sex and love and clean sweat in the air, with snow falling on the other side of the window, with Sansa’s heart a happy little drum. There is nothing _not_ sweet about this moment with him, but still, he can be stubborn as a mule, just like she can, so for now she decides to compromise. _One day I’ll call him baby and he’ll come running._

“All right, fine. My love, then.”

His eyebrows lift out of their frown as he tilts his head to regard her where she’s resting her head on his chest, her hair a splay of still-sweaty auburn over his shoulder and bicep. And yes, another pause, another one of his classic uptick smiles. But then the smile broadens into something comfortable and genuine before he cranes his neck to kiss her forehead.

“ _That_ one I like.”


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [picset](http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/180533353368/bowled-over-by-jillypups-chapter-17-sansas)

May

 

Sansa’s bathroom is small and decidedly feminine, with dried lavender in a blue and white porcelain vase on the counter and three vanilla candles on the window sill. Because of both of those things, its size and those softly scented touches, it always smells of her, and that is what makes it one of Stannis’s favorite rooms in her house, second only to her bedroom for the rather obvious reasons. He’s standing in it now, the morning of Sansa’s big race, and even though it’s only 5:00am, even though he’s not the one running the marathon today, even though he’s not had his first cup of coffee yet, he finds that his heart is racing.

Not a usual sensation for Stannis Baratheon. He can count the times his nerves nearly overcame him on one hand; Shireen’s Caesarian birth; when the first reviews came out on his scathing expose of Robert’s transgressions; seeing Sansa in the farmer’s market, knowing full well she could turn him down after he spent all that time throwing together that party. He’s certain there are more, no man can be _that_ unflappable, but those are the utmost significant points in his personal history that come to mind at the query.

The reason for his anxiety now is both one of the smallest and one of the largest, and he’s staring at it, here in the palm of his hand. He swallows hard with a tight grit of his teeth before lifting his gaze to his own reflection so that he can assess the man, as it has been noted in pop music, in the mirror.

His bare chest is thinly muscled but still broad thanks to his shoulders, and his stomach might not be washboard but it’s not bad for a man narrowing in on 50. He’s maintained his health and his physique his entire life out of simple pragmatism, though over the past several months it has also been due to keeping up appearances for his stunning significant other. Vanity, thy name is Stannis, he thinks dryly with a huff of laughter and the slight shake of his head. Vanity, perhaps, but also a healthy dose of simply wanting to be _around_ on this earth. He’s the December in this relationship, but he’ll be damned if he succumbs to the pitfalls of aging.

“You’re not a weak man,” he murmurs to himself. “You’re not an _old_ man, either. Not yet. So get it together, Baratheon.”

Baratheon. He’s managed to turn that name into a pillar of relentless justice and honest integrity, and indeed he started to let the stony strength of it seep into his very marrow. But that shows up differently in his expression these days; the deep groove between his eyebrows has mellowed somewhat. His jaw hurts him less. His eyes have lost some of that hawkish flint to them, a quality about which Shireen always teased him. He isn’t a soft-looking man but he can see the differences, and he knows exactly the reason why.

“Baby! Are you almost done? I know it doesn’t start for another two hours but I just want to get there, do some stretches, and some warm up jogs.”

Stannis clears his throat. “Almost, yes,” he replies, loud enough to be heard through the closed door.

“God I’m so nervous. I mean, _excited,_ too, thrilled beyond belief, but _so_ nervous,” she says, her voice hitting that higher octave like it always does when she’s nervous. Stannis suddenly wonders if his voice does the same thing.

“You’ll do fine,” he assures her, glancing away from his reflection to look at the bathroom door. “Better than fine, you will run a magnificent marathon.”

“I know, I know, I mean, _god,_ we’ve been training for months,” she says, in the full-fledged babble-mode that should exasperate him instead of delight. “I will absolutely kick myself in the shins if I can’t finish or if I walk. I’ll just have to keep your little surprise present in the forefront of my mind to get me to the finish line.”

“Good thinking.”

Lovely, vibrant Sansa. The thought of her crossing the finish line, exhausted but triumphant, reaping the reward of her dozen pledges plus the few dozen more he garnered on her behalf, is almost, almost enough to tamp down his anxiety. But then he looks down at the ring in his hand, Sansa’s finish-line surprise, his mother’s own engagement ring cut in the art deco style from the 1920’s, and the nerves coming flooding back.

Stannis looks back at his reflection. Fifty percent of marriages end in divorce, he thinks. This could end in ruin. He sets the ring on the counter, reaches for his folded stack of clothes on the counter by the dried lavender, and quickly gets dressed.

But then he is reminded of his own previous failed marriage, and the differences are so stunningly large that he cannot help but smile to himself. This is my chance to get it right, he thinks, picking the ring back up, and he gives it a ridiculous squeeze of superstition, imagining his late mother squeezing back, before zipping it safe and sound in the inner pocket of his running jacket. His smile broadens when he hears Sansa drum out a light tattoo on the closed door with her fingertips, gentle the way she wakes him in the morning with her nails the faintest drag down his back, and while it’s a sweet, tender gesture it is one that never fails to arouse him.

“Coming baby?”

The flick of his gaze back to his reflection. He inhales sharply, closes his eyes briefly before opening them. Stannis manages to shake the idiotic smile from his expression before he lets go of the breath.

“Coming, my love,” he says, reaching for the door.


End file.
